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LIBRARY^Fa)^NGRESS. 

§}piiu ?^ • ifoiu^rifty % 



I'MTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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ESSAYS 



James Vila Blake 




CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

BOSTON: GEO. H. ELLIS 

1887 






COPYRIGHT BY 

JAMES VILA BLAKE 

iSS6 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Of Choice 7 

Of Faculty 10 

Of Public Education 15 

Of Happiness and Time 21 

Of Vainglory 26 

Of Luck 29 

Of Seeing Good Things 38 

Of Side-lights of Intelligence 42 

Of Individuality 47 

Of Questions of Heroism 55 

Of Praising 59 

Of Censure . 64 

Of Flattery 69 

Of Government 76 

Of Hand-writing 99 

Of Knowledge 103 

Of Meditation 107 

Of Common Sense 114 

Of Requital 122 

Of Anger 125 

Of Judgment of Others 134 

Of Patience 137 

Of Enemies 145 

Of Immortal Life 150 

Of Death 160 

Of Emergency 180 

Of Conscience 185 

Of His Letters 193 

Of Character as a Work 205 

Of Superiority 210 

Topical Index 213 



DEDICATION 



This book is inscribed to 

LOUISA LEE WARE 

AND 

MART HARRIET WARE, 

in witness of a quarter-century of inspiring friendship. 

'^ F rttctus amicitice manner cibus." 



OF CHOICE 

Choice is good old English, with a root in the 
Saxon; but in the act it involves the Latin Sacrifice^ 
which means to make something holy by offering it 
in worship; or, perhaps, to do something sacred — it 
being thought in primitive religion that nothing more 
holy can be done than to give or forego something 
for devotion. Choice and sacrifice go in one, and the 
philosophy of either is the statement of our circum- 
scription. The simple principle is " that as we can 
not have everything, we must give up some things for 
the sake of having others." Choice, therefore, is the 
test and measure of us; for whoso can not have 
everything must needs pitch his choice, and he will 
pitch it as his nature is, high or low; wherefore choice 
becomes the vernier of our lives. Or better, perhaps, 
if I call it a double register, in two parts, the one fol- 
lowing the other to divide more nicely still what the 
first already has measured. For our choices take our 
dimensions in two ways: First, By the kind of them. 
We may select paltry and showy things, ease, pleas- 
ures which have no mind in them, cheap influence 
with our fellows. Whether there be baseness in this, 
or whether, as the Stoics would have it, it be only 
such a savage ignorance as would choose a glass bead 
before a book, the reckoning is the same as to coarse 
grain in character; and they who publish this measure 

(7) 



8 Of Choice 

of themselves do, indeed, like heavy-bearded cowards, 
assume but " nature's excrement " to make themselves 
respected. If we set our choice so high that perforce 
the low must be left, so high as beauty, generosity, 
strength of mind, stores of knowledge, memories of 
the hungry fed, the forsaken cheered, the fallen lifted, 
humane works watched and re-enforced — it is no 
more than to elect the things which mark us as men. 
Secondly, Our choices grade us by our energy in 
them. Small difference, whether we call the good 
bad, or follow it with so faint heart as gives excel- 
lence no praise; as a man often shows of a maid that 
he acknowledges her goodness every way, yet loves 
her not. This is but a mean and scanty following of 
a good election — wherein plainly lies one cause of the 
power of the bad; for the bad follow their selfish 
objects with great energy of choice, while the com- 
mon good people move for the higher things but 
feebly. I have read that the poet Thomson, who 
was indolent, was found in his garden nibbling a pear 
that hung to a bough, being too lazy to take his hands 
from his pockets to pluck the fruit. If he made 
choice of the pear, it was choice in such a fashion of 
weakness as gave him neither fruit nor credit — the 
like of many moral elections in the world. The wise 
Joseph Allen says of the Albigenses that they were 
" like those of all time whose pietistic zeal is touched 
with communistic fervor, capable of the intensest 
enthusiasm and self-devotion." Is not this because, 
all wealth being sunk in the common fund, each man 
may be devoted to the higher ends undistracted ? But 



Of Choice 9 

better still if each who owns and handles his own 
work-fruits, be, as he may be, zealous in like manner 
to apply himself and his material to the things which 
his soul chooses when he is clad in his right mind. 
Nothing so fatal as to think that without a firm elec- 
tion of the best, we can cozen Nature of good things; 
for this makes us not only the sport of events, but 
worse, pursuers of the lower objects of life, because 
these seem to cost the least. It is momentous and 
strange (or rather, it would be strange, if we knew 
not in what disciplines and costs Nature wraps virtue), 
that overthrows of the higher self, of the thinking 
part, of the heart's solemnities — choices which at last 
leave us stranded hulks on life's lea — in the beginning 
seem not painful sacrifices, more often only postpone- 
ments while we go after other things — to return never. 
It is a factor of energetic choice to understand that 
it is a choice, and that some things are jDut aside for 
better things; ay, and a noble factor, for many choose 
with a secret hope and contrivance yet to possess all, 
not seeing the repugnant elements in the chemistry of 
moral qualities which no cunning can combine. To 
choose nobly and strongly is to judge at first and 
heedfully what is signified, and then having made 
choice, to go on therewith in equable and forecast 
quietude — as the poet clung to his song, which, he 
said, " found him poor at first and kept him so." For 
want of this reflection, continually and ignobly men 
grumble because they lack what they have not paid 
for, and will not; or else they whimper at not keep- 
ing what they have expended while they possess 



lo Of Faculty 

what they bought therewith — as a pig roots at his 
emptied trough, not with felicitation for his meal, but 
with rage that he has it not yet to eat. 

Sacrifice carries a peculiar reward which is worthy 
of reflection. There is a law of reaction by which 
sacrifice raises the values obtained by it; and this in 
proportion to the greatness of the sacrifice. First we 
pay the cost for love of the object, and then the great 
cost makes love more. A beautiful law of mind, a 
wonderful requital ! If so much we prize anything 
that we will suffer for it, bear toiling days, watching 
nights, waiting, anxiety, hope deferred, men's scorn 
or pity or anger, one would think such valuation 
enough and attainment an ample reward. But what 
recompense so great as the object grown dearer and 
better in our eyes than from afar we thought, and 
worth more even than we embraced pain to pay? 
Yet so it fares with a purchase by costly and noble 
sacrifice. This is a law of mind on which well we 
may linger and behold with a certain awe the increase 
of the strength of the strong, of the joy of the joyful. 



OF FACULTY 

« The first shall be last and the last shall be first," 
or, as otherwise it is expressed elsewhere, " If any 
man would be first, he shall be last of all." Spoke 
Jesus any other so great reflection on human wit as 
this? For it is a sign of little wit to reverence wit 
inordinately, or the place and praise of it. La Roche- 



Of Faculty 1 1 

foucauld has said, " The height of ability consists in 
knowing v^rell the real value of things." Now, one 
of these things to be valued is the ability or wit itself; 
and if this be valued too much, the over-prizing is 
underwitted. One of the signs of faculty is that 
faculty itself be not estimated unduly, but given its 
own place and no more. 

La Rochefoucauld remarks also that " Everybody 
speaks well of his heart, but no one dares to speak 
well of his head." But again he says, " Every one 
complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody 
of his judgment." But why are we both unwilling 
to depreciate our judgment, and yet afraid to praise 
it? This double fact shows the truth. If we were 
afraid only to praise our intelligence, it might be be- 
cause mental power was ranked so low that we 
wished not to seem to value what, by common con- 
sent, was disregarded. If, on the other hand, we 
were unwilling only to depreciate our intelligence, it 
might be because talent was ranked high by common 
consent. But if equally we are unwilling to praise it 
and to depreciate it, this must be because wit is ranked 
so very high that no one is willing to confess himself 
deficient in it, and yet no one dares pretend to it. Or 
express it thus : No one will confess inability because 
he admits it not even to himself; and no one will 
claim ability because he is afraid others will not 
admit it. 

There is great general admiration for smartness, 
brightness, — parts, as they have been called imme- 
morially. But I like not parts, but wholeness. Why 



12 Of Faculty 

should wit be ranked so high? Why should intel- 
lectual keenness be such a Caesar? Why, especially, 
should it keep all the rest "in servile f earf ulness " ? 
Why, also, should we think it modest and proper to 
praise our hearts, saying that we are constant, faithful, 
loving, true; but on the other hand, presumptuous 
and intolerable to praise our heads, as to say that we 
are sagacious, capable, talented ? If there be anything 
in the common opinion which, however brightness 
may receive social homage, nevertheless is unalterable 
in human nature, that moral stability is finer than 
intellectual power, then it is saying a deal more to 
profess a grand heart than to claim a great mind. Yet 
we do the one without shame; we are overpowered 
if charged with the other. Probably one reason of 
this is very honorable to human nature. For as the 
greatest things are the most common, so wide, noble 
and loving hearts are common on every side compared 
to the mere flashing of wit; wherefore it seems no 
shame to rank ourselves in a brotherhood of excel- 
lence which is so wide. 

I weary of smartness and of adulation of it. It 
is but a flare of gas, which, against the peace and 
quiet of common sunshine, is crimson and smoke. 
Think of the things which excite often little attention, 
and yet are as much nobler than brightness as the 
heavens are large to contain the earth. Breadth and 
sympathy, patience, which is appreciation of the value 
of things, reverence, which is appreciation of the value 
of other people, humility, which is a broad intelli- 
gence applied to oneself, and love, whether in the 



Of Faculty 1 3 

form of divine serviceableness wliich embraces hu- 
manity, or in that concentration which from individual 
devotion draws strength and bhss — these are the 
glories of character. There is a genius for loving. 
For aught I see, it is as admirable as a genius for 
poetry, or music, or sculpture, or science; and men 
would bow to it even more than to those shining 
qualities, but that it is as common as the stars, being 
as heavenly. Emerson has this passage in his Essay 
of Civilization: 

" When I see how much each virtuous and gifted person, 
whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of 
excellent people who are not known far from home, and per- 
haps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in 
virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities, I see 
what cubic values America has, and in these a better certifi- 
cate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth." 

Smartness goes with shallowness. For, first, it 
shows an eminent trait thereof, namely, " plentiful 
lack " of perception of superiority and of deference 
to it, whether of age or attainment; and, secondly, 
real strength always carries too much to move briskly. 
This Galton remarks in a curious way, in describing 
his experiments in Psychometry. He says: 

" I found the purely verbal associations to contrast forcibly 
in their rapid mechanical precision with the tardy and imper- 
fect elaboration of highly generalized ideas; the former 
depending on an elementary action of the brain, the latter on 
an exceedingly complicated one. It v/as easy to infer from 
this the near alliance between smartness and shallowness." 

Sometimes wit revels in a cruel scorn of the slow, 
and many esteem theinselves much who yet find little 



14 Of Faculty 

in others. But this is hirking poverty, that is, over- 
estimation of property. For if we undervalue others 
because they are not witty, we sliall be likely to over- 
value ourselves for the wit to see witlessness. But this 
shows only that we compare not ourselves with the 
great things which would assign us our true and lowly 
place, but think to raise ourselves by comparison 
with small things, which only distort and exaggerate 
our worth. And by this again we shall be withheld 
from learning, since we shall think we have already 
wit enough. Wisely says La Rochefoucauld, " Some- 
times there is no less faculty in knowing how to 
profit by good advice than in being able to direct our- 
selves well." The like has been handed down to us 
from the ancients: "To adopt the good counsel of 
another seemed to Zeno a proof of greater virtue than 
originally to conceive what is just and right." In fine, 
to put first things first, this is the crown of intelli- 
gence; but no one will wear the crown to whom wit 
is the first excellence of creation. 

Be it said continually, until all men learn, that wit 
is not wisdom or beauty; for there are many things 
in the human mind besides faculty, and wise comeli- 
ness is harmony within oneself. Says Aurelius: 

" Short lived are both the praiser and the praised, and the 
rememberer and the remembered : and all this in a nook of 
this part of the world ; and not even here do all agree, no not 
any one with himself: and the whole earth, too, is a point." 

How little matter it is that I be praised for wit, or 
find another to plume my head-feathers which my 
own boasts of mouth cannot reach; but how great a 



Of Public Education 15 

matter that I be found loving, faithful, benevolent, 
and that I dress these, my wing-plumes; for these are 
the qualities by which we are supported in the sky. 



OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 

The question of education at public expense is two- 
fold: first, a question of justice; secondly, of expedi- 
ency; which points arise in all public matters. 
Plainly, expediency hangs on results and is determined 
thereby; but justice turns on where the burden of 
the cost may lie rightfully; for cost there must be, and 
that a heavy one. Now, both on score of expediency 
and on score of justice have arisen against public 
education many murmurs, which, though louder, 
happily as I think, in the past, still, unhappily, not yet 
have died away nor lost themselves in wisdom. For 
many assert, and with that boldness which always is 
the lackey of interest and calculation, that public edu- 
cation has done many harms in the country, and that, 
whether doing well or ill, it is an unjust burden on 
those who must pay for it. A circular of our bureau 
of education at Washington, for the year 1881, has 
set forth the complaints of those parts of the popula- 
tion which like not to have the whole nation educate 
the children thereof. On score of expediency come 
reproaches from the aristocracy (so it is called) of 
caste, which sticks not at saying that the great 
"majority of mankind are born to serve the few," 
and that surely the " less intelligent the servant, the 
more docile the service;" wherefore, they say, " edu- 



1 6 Of Public Education 

cation unfits the children of toil for their lot in life," 
and so is inexpedient on all hands, being unthrifty for 
the master and uncomfortable for the servant, and 
thus on both accounts unwholesome for the commu- 
nity. By this same reason, that it is inexpedient, an 
aristocracy (so it is called) of culture, averring that 
men for the most part are born dull, and that pains to 
till the poor soil reaps little harvest, resolve thereupon 
that they, " who have good wits," must do the world's 
thinking, and so must seize the knowledge whereby 
to think ; and that the right of education is theirs alone 
who can use it; wherefore, it is but waste to expend 
the advantage on the common stock. Thus these 
aristocracies plead on score of exi:)ediency. Now on 
score of justice there is an aristocracy (so it is called) 
of wealth which speaks full as loudly for its own part, 
saying that public education is an unjust tax on 
capital from two points. For first, if a man be made 
wiser or more learned, instantly his wants are greater; 
for he cannot live so near the brute's way as before. 
Then must his wages be increased, whereas ignorant 
laborers want as little as their knowledge is little, and 
so are content with small pay. This is one burden 
against which amassed wealth cries out as injustice; 
and the second is this, that it is tyranny for the state 
to tax one person to educate the children of another. 
" The brats," says one, " are none of my getting nor 
of my approving; who may tax me for them, or why 
may the state adopt them for wards at my expense ? " 
Now, to these arguments of classes that either 
enjoy privileges or hold the power of money, there is 



Of Public Education 17 

a counter claim which thus may be put: That edu- 
cation is a debt which capital, or the possessor of the 
same, owes to the needs of the whole; or that, as I 
have heard it stated generously by a merchant: " The 
money of the country must educate the children of the 
country, whose the money may be soever, or whose 
the children." 

These opposite claims I will consider from the two 
points which pertain to all public matters, as I have 
said, justice and expediency. 

First, as to justice : Of this I can say little in this 
place, not because there is little to say, but so much. 
For indeed it is an immense subject, fit for a great 
volume if one enter on it; and also a hard subject, for 
the books which have treated of it agree not together, 
and there is yet much to be learned as to the facts and 
much to be reasoned from them before we shall know 
where justice lies, either in the making of wealth or 
in the distribution of it, or in public claims on it. But 
one thing is plain on this point — which is all that, for 
my purpose herein, I need say — namely, that power 
and justice are not always at one. In the perfect 
state which Emerson has described: 

" When the state house is the hearth, 
When the church is private worth, 
Then the perfect state is come, 
The republican at home," 

in this perfect state, I say (in which, I am sure, the 

sage means not to set off a man into individualism 

apart from the whole, but only as it were to place him 

. at home in law : that is, obedient to the true law of 



1 8 Of Public Education 

nature within him), pL.inly power and justice always 
would be the same and arise together. But in the 
savage state evidently force rules, and justice must 
wait long for the throne. Now, between the civil 
flower of the state and the savage root thereof there 
are all degrees of budding and blossoming, in which 
justice and power will mingle unequally, and often 
struggle with each other, before they come to holy 
completion. Wherefore, if any one have power over 
wealth now, it follows not that it is a just or right 
power unless this be the perfect state, which j^lainly it 
is not, being full of abuses and endless in miseries; 
whence it follows, I say, that he who wields wealth 
in fact, not always docs so rightfully and in justice; 
that is, perhaps he owns it not in equity, and surely 
not for his own uses altogether. 

Secondly, as to expediency: Whether there be 
claim or not on wealth; that is, whether justice allow 
(nay indeed, require, I may say) that capital be charged 
with public education, still it is prudent so to charge 
it; and this I think can meet with little disagreement, 
if it be considered wisely, without the clang and 
clamor of selfishness. Prudently, if M^e can not chain 
a strong creature, then tame him. What plainer now 
than that the people can not be chained, or what 
lesson has history inore enforced, or more times over, 
than that the people will burst forth, shattering their 
prisons and breaking their chains, as in France, in 
England, in Italy and where not where tyranny has 
lived both harshly and long ? And moreover, if they 
themselves, the people, rend not their own chains, 



Of Public Education 19 

still some of the educated, the prosperous, the privi- 
leged, think for them, loving them better than their 
own fortunes, and incite and lead them to struggles 
for liberty, and fill them with the breath thereof, as 
was the case with the slaves in our own country. 
What thrives without law and order? Surely not 
the riches of the rich. Is anything safe but in peace 
and quiet? No. But this peace must be either of 
power, as by chains and despotism; or of law and 
nature, which is the blessed peace that civilization 
makes, taming ferocity, and lifting men into the divine 
semblance. Therefore, public education is prudence 
— the only prudence, indeed. To this testified an 
English statesman when the people had enforced their 
claim to u^^cr themselves at the polls; for he said: 
" Now we must educate our masters." And in like 
manner Lowell says: "It may be conjectured that it 
is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold 
them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less 
dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their 
heads." 

So far of justice and of prudence touching public 
education. But I place a third point; for though 
commonly the just and the prudent ways be thought 
all for public matters, I dare to hope and indeed to 
think that besides there is the loving way, and that 
this belongs in public affairs as in private. For why 
is selfishness the better for being magnified? And 
why, if a brother be odious who thinks only of him- 
self against his brother, is a citizen to be commended 
who has no love in his heart for the many that make 



20 Of Public Education 

the state ? Wherever any privilege grow^s rich, w^ith 
whatever advantage or pleasure, there gathers a 
greedy kin of selfishness ; and if this be not matched by 
the heart, I know not what else has power to help 
reason cope with it, and bring it to disrepute. For if 
the heart work not on the reason, it is certain that 
pride will, and interest too, both of which are great 
blindfolders. And of all privileges, I have seen none 
more selfish and more prone to forget what is owed 
to the world, than the privilege of high culture and of 
much-instructed intelligence; for such a mind has so 
inclosed itself very often with the hangings of refine- 
ment, of delicacy, of beauty, that it will not walk in 
the rough world, even to do it good. 

Now the secret of the loving way in this matter is 
this: that as a wide mind and large intelligence shows 
itself by understanding through imagination what 
it shares not in experience (this being, indeed, 
the poet's "faculty divine"), so a wide and large heart 
proves itself so when it embraces another man's needs 
which itself feels not, or but little, quickly gathers 
from the wide world emotions of tenderness which 
either its own experience supplies not or which go 
far beyond, and collects the whole into the focus of 
its heat. And who values not a large heart? Or 
when was it not called grand? Such is his heart who, 
having no children, is kindled to educate children. 

Wherefore public education, I must think, will 
flourish perfectly wherever the wealth-holders have 
good mind, good conscience, good heart. For, if 
intelligent, they will discern prudence soon and justice 



Of Happiness and Time 2 1 

at last. If moral, they will feel both to be incumbent. 
If lovmg, they will crown all with generosity. 



OF HAPPINESS AND TIME 

The demand of Time on Happiness is two-fold: 
first, that we shall take all the present moment holds 
for us; secondly, that we shall fill the moment as full 
as we can out of ourselves, and dignify it; for this is 
a payment without which we can take nothing. 

As to the first point, plainly the present moment is 
the dwelling of happiness; but this is because it is 
creator of past and future, and never leaves care of 
either. We hold the past by the reproduction of mem- 
ory. We summon the future by the forecast of imagi- 
natioia : without which powers and their present exer- 
cise, what joy ? For the present is but a breath, a 
feeling, an instant, an atom, a mote, here and gone. 
If it were all we could enjoy, we should be simply 
like passing bursts of strength or like bubbling sensa- 
tions each dying in the next, as perhaps we may con- 
ceive some creatures to be who have no memory. But 
the forecasting of the future depends on memory, 
since all that is to be grows out of what has been. 
Therefore, memory is the storehouse of zest; and 
happiness, though it draws from the future because 
hope and imagination are blissful, yet moi-e exercises 
itself in filling up the present from the past; for this 
is to live our lives all at once and to combine past 
pleasures into one whole of delight, which is the very 



22 Of Happiness and Time 

nobility and humanity of enjoyment. Hence, the value 
of a rich past, to be lived over again by communion 
with happy memories, crowded with thoughts great 
as heaven, and especially with growth; for this is 
most absorbing and interesting always. All of these 
may be compacted into a very brief space, so that 
some great year, or two or three perhaps, may hold 
riches for a lifetime, and pour their wealth into 
the lap of the present perpetually. But, if the enjoy- 
ment of the present springs so much from the past, 
so do the riches of the future depend on the wealth of 
the present; for, if the present be not rich going by, 
how can the future be rich when it arrives? The 
future is the riches of the present gathered in a mass 
of power. To glean all possible worth, therefore, 
from the things that pass along, whatever they be, to 
see the divinity in them, to seize on the great side of 
them, if they be little, — that is, on their relationship 
to the great, — and to drain the pleasure of little things, 
— if only, perhaps, a draught of cold water on a dusty 
day, with a sense of gratitude therewith, — this is wis- 
dom, if one wish to be blest. 

Aurelius advises " to enjoy life by joining one good 
thing to another, so as not to leave even the smallest 
interval between ; " and again, " Thy present opinion 
founded on understanding, and thy present conduct 
directed to social good and thy present disposition of 
contentment with everything that happens — that is 
enough." 'Tis common remark that health glows 
with a beautiful flush to him who rises from a sick 
bed, but soon it grows a common drudge. 



Of Happiness and Time 23 

The poet Gray has spoken this beautifully: 

" See the wretch that long has tost 

On the thorny bed of pain, 
At length repair his vigor lost 

And breathe and walk again ; 
The meanest floweret of the vale, 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The conimon Sun, the air, the skies, 
To him, are opening Paradise." 

Yet these things are there, shining, without the previ- 
ous " bed of pain; " but Pain is a surgeon who oper- 
ates famously right and left for blindness. We cannot 
always have mighty things attending us, but always 
the small signify much. There is much, moreover, 
in choice, — to choose tlie best. For one can not master 
all the things that sweep by him, great and small. 
But what if the best are poor, cramped, narrow, diffi- 
cult ? Then to know them where they touch Nature's 
divine intention is our resource. 

This filling up the present for happiness, both by 
fine choice and by devout sense, touches the foimtain 
of love. It is especially the enjoyment of friends; 
and lovers are to be counseled to do and think great 
things tog^ether. For what is love worth that draws 
only a baggage of little things, or that is a passage of 
sensations? If it shall live, the present must be rich 
in things fit to live. On these alone the f utui'e of love 
can feed. If as much as possible is got from our con- 
ditions, this is a greatness in itself, which will be strong 
in the future to knit the lives and hearts of the twain 
that wrestled in company. If both grow, they will 
grow together. If only one grow, they will be 



24 Of Happiness and Time 

wrenched apart. If neither grow, they will fall 
asunder by decay. 

I come to the second point, which is that not only 
we must drain the wholesome cup, but that there will 
be none if we help not to put in the balm: I mean, 
we must beautify the instant. This is both a secret 
and a result of patience. We are impatient because 
intent on leading the present up to something else, 
leaping over time, to reach a coming thing. There 
will be hindrances, and we become restive. But if we 
are intent only on the present function to be performed, 
which in doing is to be beautified, all things will profit 
us, all conditions go well with us. Is it good painting 
if an artist leap over due progress and proper order, 
to arrive at some great figure or eminent part of the 
picture? 

Emerson names beautiful behavior the finest of the 
fine arts; but good conduct is intensely busy with beau- 
tifying the instant. For manners that ignore the 
moment for the future are selfish and absent. Every 
occasion has its absolute rights — the morning, the 
meal-time, the work-time, the evening, the social-time. 
If each have its due, life is artist-worh. It has then 
the poise, order and beauty that mark a good machine, 
being comely in proportion, appropriate in color and 
harmonious in action. And if we do the present act 
well and take care of its special intent, not leaping to 
coming things, when those things arrive they fall into 
order; for then they have their proper place and must 
perforce fall into it, because other things have had their 
due place before. 



Of Hap'piness and Time 25 

But what if the present moment be hard, sad, pain- 
ful? Then we have opportunity not to complain. 
There will be some bright thing. Fasten on that. If 
none, then this, that it might be worse. Fasten on 
that. If it seem the worst possible from the outside, 
there is still this, that we may make it worse by our 
own way of taking it in the soul. 

It is a right reflection that if a man is full of the 
present moment to glorify it, he is with eternity and 
infinity; for he has all there is. Schefer has written: 

" Things great and good and beautiful and brave, 
Are done, each one of them, beyond all time, 
And he who feels himself apart from time 
Feels himself quite beyond the reach of power; 
This only makes man free and glorious." 

And Richter says: — 

" If the minute pointer be no road pointer with an Eden for 
thy soul, the month pointer still less will be so; for thou livest 
not from month to month, but from second to second. Enjoy 
thy existence more than thy manner of existence, and let the 
dearest object of thy consciousness be this consciousness 
itself." 

If we have this devotion to beautify the instant, it 
is a great point that we shall avoid hurry. This is to 
grow ripe beautifully. Is not one reason why so many 
greatest works are done late in life, that the authors 
have been busy gathering power by beautifying the 
instant? Surely waiting is a great point in living. 
We shall wait often and long, if we be wise; for we 
can not force things if they belong not to us by nature, 
nor can they be withheld if they be ours. But we 



26 Of Vainglory 

can not snatch them, however they belong to us. 
Now it is easy to wait if we take the instant as some- 
thing to be beautified, that is, used to its full scope of 
beauty and its full span of power. It is hard to wait 
if we are scaling the moment to seize the future vio- 
lently before it comes to hand. The perversity of 
materials and circumstances is a common remark. But 
they only seem hostile because we are trying to leap 
over them to something else, and they stand in the 
way, or are too high for the leap. But this should 
mean to us that we are not to leap, but to occupy our- 
selves with evoking the beautiful from the heap before 
us, or in stirring our own souls into it that the com- 
j^ound may he beautiful. 



OF VAINGLORY 

It is difficult to judge of vanity or vainglory, how 
far it is blameworthy; for perhaps if any one knew he 
was vain, then he would not be so. A philosopher 
said that if a man should suddenly believe he was 
moral, he would be moral. But the strength of 
morality is in this, that no one can believe he is doing 
well if his intention be ill. So, perhaps, it is impossi- 
ble that one should be vainglorious if he knew that he 
was so. Therefore it is diflicult to judge of one's self 
as to whether one be puffed up or not. But, contrari- 
wise, is it not a sign of conscious complacency lurking 
in ourselves, to suspect or accuse others of being 
flushed ? If we be not acquainted with vanity, how 



Of Vainglory 27 

should we know it so readily, and why annoyed but 
that it seems to dispute our own self-esteem? We 
must examine narrowly why conceit is a trait so dis- 
pleasing to us; for it may be the complacency of 
another offends because it flaunts a rival and disquiets 
our self-praise; as La Rochefoucauld avers that "it 
is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others 
intolerable." Hence, it has been said well that slander 
and evil speaking come forth much more from vanity 
than from malice; for we give credence and currency 
to an ill trait or bad report, not maliciously to do 
another harm, but from vainglor}'^, to support our own 
conceit of ourselves, and shore up our claim of superi- 
ority. 

Vainglory is ridiculous, for it is then a question with 
what a man compares himself. With a low standard ? 
But he is not made a mountain because his measure is 
a mole-hill. Or with a high standard? Then cer- 
tainly he will not vaunt himself. Or if he be among 
the very great and grand spirits who might boast of 
themselves, if any might, but who always are those 
who do not, then must he compare himself with the 
vastness of knowledge and with the greatness of the 
earth and of the heavens. But to himself then he will 
seem to sink into these as if lost or dissolved or dis- 
appearing in their glory; and when he remembers 
himself, it will be only to be humbled and quelled. 

To be vain of our own faculty is as foolish as to be 
conceited over another man's work; for as no man 
made himself, it is not what he is, but only what 
he does with his material, that can be praise to himj 



28 Of Vainglory 

and even over this he must be humble in proportion 
as God has dealt him a fine tool with which to work. 
Humility, dignity and gratefulness are three virtues 
that go close together, and they frequent the cave of 
silence. Much speaking, and especially eager speak- 
ing, is like to be proud speaking. For when wisdom 
forces utterance, there can not be high-flown words 
nor a swelling manner; but if the object be to display 
parts and set off wit, speech eagerly will forestall and 
engross. 

It is a common remark that vanity stands in the way 
of learning; for no man will seek anything more or 
better if he is satisfied with what he is. But it is a 
deeper thought, touching our lives more nearly, that 
vanity distorts experience; for some emotions it fends 
off, and others it invites too often or intensifies. It 
keeps away or weakens fear, of which there is a 
worthy and useful kind ; and love and hope. For an 
unabashed and forward man will not be humble 
enough to fear, nor self-forgetful enough to love, nor 
devout enough to hope. But vanity opens the way to 
hatred, to jealousy, to shame, and puts an especial 
sting in them. For the consequential will make great 
account of any hurt that is done them; and, says La 
Rochefoucauld, " the reason why the pangs of shame 
and jealousy are so sharp is this: vanity gives us no 
aid in supporting them." Also, he says: " The most 
violent passions have their intermissions, but vanity 
gives us no respite." Strong emotions, which are 
great disturbers of the mind, at least are not perpetual, 
but leave us breathing space in which the mind girds 



Of Luck 29 

itself anew. But vanity is always agitating us, and 
leaves us no moments free from its distortion of our 
vision. Though egotism is called sometimes an 
armor in which one is proof against the pangs of self- 
distrust and of the sense of short-coming, it has very 
great mishaps of its own; for it meets continually 
with great shocks, and there is nothing to mitigate its 
pain, since by its nature it stands alone and unsup- 
ported. 

The worst vanity is that which never makes any 
pretense or tries to display any parts, but angrily or 
sulkily expects attention or gifts without even the 
pains to appear to deserve them. This egotism is 
offended when any one else is honored. There are 
some who never work, but make huge claim to 
attention for what they are, and are angry if people 
do not bow to them because they might do great 
things if they would. To be always comparing our- 
selves with others is the most insidious vanity. 

Finally, vainglorious persons always will fail of 
true honor, because they bestow it on themselves. 
All decoration must come from others. Humility 
waits to receive the reward if others give it, and, 
therefore, if crowned, is securely crowned, both by 
authority and with concurrent good will. 



OF LUCK 

Luck has three meanings in common usage. All 
the meanings agree that luck is something which 



30 Of Luck 

affects our interests in some manner; for who would 
speak of the falling of a leaf in one place or another 
as luck, or call it lucky howsoever a raindrop falls, 
whether in a pond or on the soil ? But to this agree- 
ment there are added disagreements, which make the 
three meanings of the word, namely, that the luck 
which affects our interests is pure chance without 
effort of ours, or is pure chance in spite of effort, or is a 
sujDcr-natural ruling. 

As to the first meaning, it is without question that 
frequently we observe events which are matters of 
pure chance. Not that in these there is no law, for 
there is as much a law of chance as of the spheres; 
chance means not chaos. But there befall pure 
chances, without will or purpose apparently, either 
for them or against them. Fi'om a friend I had an 
account of his finding one day a bird hung by a 
horse-hair under the eaves of his house. It was 
plain the little creature had been using the hair in 
making its nest, and, disposing it with its bill, in some 
way had made a running knot in the hair; or per- 
haps the knot was there ready-made when the bird 
picked up the hair from the ground. But, however, 
it had slipped its head in some way into the noose, and 
then, launching forth into the air, it was caught about 
the neck, and there it was hanging dead, with the 
hair drawn tight around its throat. What a strange 
chance this was, and with what a cruel look ! Per- 
haps among all the many millions of birds from the 
foundation of the earth, none other had hung itself 
thus with a hair. Charles Dickens records with inter- 



Of Ltick 31 

est, and, indeed, too much interest if it be examined 
minutely, an instance of pure chance. He carelessly 
wrote down three names of horses entered for the 
three chief races on a St. Leger day, and, " if you can 
believe it," he wrote to Forster, " without your hair 
standing on end, those three races were won, 
one after the other, by those three horses." But 
Richard Proctor attacks mathematically the astonish- 
ment of the great novelist over this chance, and shows 
that if, out of the many persons witnessing the races, 
10,000 should try the experiment of Dickens, cer- 
tainly with two or three, and probably with nine or 
ten, it would fall out as with the surprised story-teller. 
I know not whether it be beyond numbers to compute 
the chance that a bird should be hung to the eaves of 
a house by a hair. But, however the law of chance 
may explain these strange things, it is certain 
they afford no matter to the artist who wishes to 
draw human life; for fact is very often too strange 
for fiction, which must go in a middle course, with- 
out presuming too boldly on the flights of nature. 
" For," says a story-writer about his art, " many of 
these things are too singular to be accepted as natural 
invention," and adds that " it would be foolish to put 
in a book such a character as Napoleon Bonaparte." 
As to the second meaning of luck, that it is pure 
chance in spite of our efforts either way, this is the 
signification which plays the greatest part in the world, 
and often is injurious. It is said very truly that there 
are some people who have wonderful faculty for 
finding things and hitting opportunities, and others 



33 Of Luck 

who have an opposite luck in losing things and miss- 
ing openings. Some persons always succeed without 
visible effort; with others, nothing goes well however 
they strain. " For it is certain there be those," says 
Bacon, " whose fortunes are like Homer's verses that 
have more slide and easiness than the verses of other 
poets." Of ship captains it is often noted that one 
has a fame for luck, and another for being unlucky; 
as an instance of which I have this story from the 
mouth of a friend: He was acquainted with two 
captains, one of whom was very daring and venture- 
some, and the other extremely cautious. He sailed 
from Europe to America with the former, who 
pressed on at full speed, day and night, notwithstand- 
ing the presence of many dangers at that season from 
huge ice-floes in the ocean. It was learned by the 
reports of vessels coming in afterwards that he had 
sailed his headlong course during the whole journey 
through a narrow strip of deep water between two 
ice-fields, so that a very little deviation from the 
course in the night-time would have carried the 
vessel on a floe and foundered it. Then my friend 
sailed with the cautious man a long voyage to 
Oriental parts, and in the same ship came back. Both 
going and coming the captain crept slowly along his 
track, under very small sail. To the murmurs and 
remonstrances of the weary passengers he answered 
simply that the barometer was low and that he 
knew his luck. So they crept at a snail's pace, under 
cloudless skies, without any misadventure, all the way 
over and nearly all the way back, the barometer 



Of Luck 33 

being still obstinately low. But when within a few 
days of the port, suddenly, while all as usual were 
enduring impatiently the lagging pace of the vessel, 
there came out of a clear sky, without warning, a great 
squall, as if some vast invisible trumpet of cloud had 
discharged a blast, so that the ship keeled over on her 
beams, and if she had been carrying full sail surely 
would have sunk at once. When all was righted and 
the dreadful blast had swept by, the captain said 
quietly to the appalled passengers: " Well, what do 
you think now ? I told you I knew my luck." 

However such things may seem at first, if they be 
examined deeply it will be found that what appeared 
to be mere chance, sporting with our efforts and mak- 
ing game of human plans or knowledge, is really the 
result of some deep mental qualities in different per- 
sons. Luck, good or bad, is the invisible play of 
mind upon affairs, the effect of mental aptitudes and 
habits which are not in sight, but which work and 
bring forth their due issues. It seems, especially, not 
this or that capacity, but a certain admirable balance 
and joint action of all, which is the source of power. 
If we could look into the most surprising and constant 
examples of luck, we should find it, as has been 
said well, " an exceptionally effective combination of 
the mental qualities of vigilance, alertness, insight, 
forethought, tact, skill, quickness of adaption to cir- 
cumstances, and the ability to foresee a new emergency 
of circumstances in time to make an advantageous 
adaptation to it;" and, it is to be added, just in time, 
neither too early, for that will waste time, nor too 



34 Of Luck 

late, for that will not prevent the catastrophe. Again, 
says the same writer, " Luck is merely a fine sagacity 
so wrought into the whole mental temperament and 
habit of action as to be indistinguishable as a special 
faculty. It appears in the whole manner and life of 
the person." Bacon says of luck, " Perhaps the 
way of fortune is like the milken way in the sky, 
which is a meeting or knot of a number of small 
stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together. So 
are there a number of little and scarce discerned 
virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make 
men fortunate." Wherefore concerning luck he 
concludes " that there should be no doubt it is much 
in a man's self." Emerson in like manner says, 
" All successful men have agreed in one thing — they 
were causationists. They believed that things went 
not by luck, but by law ; belief in compensation, or 
that nothing is got for nothing, characterizes all 
valuable minds." 

However we strain, we can not do what is beyond 
us; and it is good luck to know this. For, " It is the 
sluggard who says," as a Turkish proverb has it, " I 
want strength;" but it is a man of little wisdom, 
which he calls poor luck, who will not know his 
strength rightly, and makes himself unlucky because 
he pushes forward beyond his faculty, and so falls by 
treading on nothing. " Each is bound by his nature," 
says an ancient Persian, " stand he in valley or on 
mountain. Scoop thou with hand poor or rich, from 
ocean or fountain, thou canst but fill thy pitcher." 
Look for luck, therefore, in a nice balance of all f acul- 



Of Luck 35 

ties and judgments. The slow captain who was so 
cautious, and the quick one who was so rash, had 
such a difference in them, it is probable, that many 
consenting indications enabled the adventurous one to 
judge so closely that he needed but narrow margin, 
while the other could be equally safe only by being 
very slow and keeping very far away, because he 
could not judge the signs well enough to know how 
far or how near the danger w^as. 

To be passing aright and moving in the same 
direction as events, is a great source of fortune and of 
power. There was meaning and wisdom in the 
humor of a man who accounted for the many rides 
which lifted him on his way, by saying that he was 
always going the way of the wagons. For if one is 
to be helped and carried along, he must either move 
with the throng or be carried not his own road. 
Sometimes the secret of luck is a patience which 
never wearies. There is a Persian saying, " A poor 
man watched a thousand years before the gate of 
paradise; then, when he snatched one little nap, it 
opened and shut." Sometimes luck lies in a strong 
purpose, for which, however, there must have gone 
before sufficient precision and attention of thought; of 
which there is an apt Hindoo fable related thus in 
" Conway's Sacred Mythology : " 

" In the Grove of Gotema there lived a Brahmin who 
bought a slieep in another village, who carried it liome on his 
shoulder to sacrifice He was seen by three rogues, who 
resolved to take the animal from him by the following strata, 
gem: Having separated, they agreed to encounter the 
Brahmin on his road as if coming from different parts. One 



36 Of Luck 

of them cried out, ' Oh, Brahmin, why dost thou carry that 
dog on thy shoulder?' ' It is not a dog,' replied the Brahmin, 
•it is a sheep for sacrifice.' As he went on the second knave 
met him and put the same question, whereupon the Brahmin, 
throwing the sheep on the ground, looked at it again and 
again. Having replaced it on his shoulder the good man went 
with mind waving like a string. But when the third rogue 
met him and said, 'Father, where art thou taking that 
dog.'' the Brahmin believed his eyes bewitched, threw down 
the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to feast on 
that which he had provided for the gods." 

This ill luck was ignorance and superstition; but 
without confidence in nature who can be fortunate? 
The poet Schefer calls misfortune a " sin against 
intelligence," and says: 

" Nor does it help the good to will good things, — 
Stand at his door all day with open hands, 
And make himself a heaven of others' woe — 
If he, meanwhile, as man, is like the blind, 
Who gropes about on earth as in the dark; 
For herbs eats deadly poison ; like the child, 
For crabs, lays hold on scorpions, who, to save 
His ass from drowning in the foimtain, drowns 
Himself therein, unskilled to know the signs 
Of the storm's coming, goes on board his ship, 
And miserably founders in the gale ! " 

Now, if we understand what unlucky persons are, 
we shall see that they are to be shunned, or that we 
are to consort with them only out of kindness or from 
sympathy, but without joining our interests with 
theirs; for they are persons who are not harmonious 
with the condition of things around them, and are 
as much at issue with life as a bird who should try to 
live in the water, or a fish to float in the air. If v/e 



Of Luck 37 

join with them, it will be to no purpose, for they will 
involve us. Aurelius utters a like prudence: — 

" In the gymnastic exercises, suppose that a man has torn 
thee with his nails and by dashing against thy head has 
inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vex- 
ation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards 
as a treacherous fellow ; and yet we are on our guard against 
him, not however as an enemy, nor yet'with suspicion; but we 
quietly get out of his way." 

But, on the other hand, it is well to seek the neigh- 
borhood of the lucky, follow their steps, join their 
enterprises; for this is merely to pay the right hom- 
age to a harmonious wisdom and to that adaptive 
balance of faculties in which strength lies. It is 
a sad part of luck that its power arises from the 
multitude of those who are unlucky ; for great sums 
of fortunate things fall to a few persons because so 
many are unwise, unsound, wasteful, unfit. The most 
frequent of external causes is, as Bacon says, that " the 
folly of one man is the fortune of another." This is 
a sad thought; but there are two thoughts that 
lighten it; one is, that human love finds great employ- 
ment by reason of the fact; the other, that power is 
gathered where it ought to be — to the wise, the 
alert, the far- thinking and the far-seeing, which is 
better for the world as it is now, and by this, besides, 
the number of the lucky will grow. 

As to the third meaning of luck, that there is in it a 
fate or mysterious power above the common order of 
nature, it need concern us little. Yet, indeed, although 
it is passing and ought now to be gone from the bet- 
ter informed, this idea still binds the ignorant hand 



38 Of Seeing Good Things 

and foot. And a sorry binding it is; for who can walk 
with freedom or power or judgment who thinks him- 
self lashed from behind by fate, or by a demon, or by 
Deity? Neither is there any encouragement or 
dignity m such a thought; for it is but a mean and 
servile way of shirking our own errors by loading 
them on Providence. This baseness lies, though 
amiably covered, in Dryden's saying that " the lucky 
are the favorites of heaven." But Plutarch's excla- 
mation is noble when he has told how the captain, 
at the bursting of the storm, first shortens sail and 
makes all snug, and then says his prayers: " For God 
is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's 
excuse." 



OF SEEING GOOD THINGS 

Plutarch has a shrewd story of a servant whose 
master had a cellar of wines, some very good and 
some poor. Being at supper alone, he commanded 
his servant to bring him some of the poor wine. 
When afterwards the servant was asked what his 
master was doing, he answered that he left him call- 
ing for bad when the good was by him. Life is a 
feast for the senses in which abundance is furnished 
for every kind of taste or perception, and some of the 
things are very good, some not so good. Though we 
call not for the bad, because we have no need to 
call, the abundance being within reach of every sense, 
yet if we take the bad when the good is by us, we are 
even more foolish than the master in Plutarch's story, 



Of Seeing Good Things 39 

because we are not saving our own good things, but 
denying ourselves nature's bounty, which is no nearer 
the end for any one's using. There might be some 
excuse for the man who hoarded his own against 
some better time to use it, but what excuse for him 
who pitches on the bad when the whole of nature's 
good is close to him, and not to be consumed, how- 
ever enjoyed ? As there are vast multitudes of beau- 
tiful and good things on every hand, and as there are 
also many unsightly and painful things, a secret of 
happiness is to have an eye only for the good things, 
and to see so many of these that no room is left to see 
the bad. But this shows that the eye is not the seeing 
part; hence that many " having eyes see not." The 
eye can not gather everything because of the vast 
multitude of things to be seen. Therefore, whatever 
directs the eye as to what it shall look at is the true 
seeing faculty. For the eye is but a glass turned 
about to this or that object by the true seeing power 
within. What would an eye be that could discern 
only shades and not lights, either in landscape or pic- 
ture, and only dark colors but no bright tints, and 
only angles but no curves? Yet this same must be 
thought of that truly seeing faculty within, which, 
turning the eye here or there as it will, directs it only 
on blots and blemishes. Thus, however, do very 
many people, who spend all their lives looking so 
hard for the ills that they never discover the bright, 
shining things, like an astronomer who should peer 
forever into blank space between the scattered stars 
and maintain there were no lights in the sky. It is a 



40 Of Seeing Good Things 

nice question how ignorant such a person will be; he 
will see much, indeed, but yet he will be j^oor from 
seeing most the bad, unless the world be more bad 
than good, which hope and religion forbid. But even 
this gives not the whole amount of the ignorance; 
for he who sees the bad when the good is by him 
may see many things, yet the many put together will 
not equal for value or for pleasure one good and noble 
thing which he will pass blindly. And one sight 
which is very seraphic such a person certainly will 
miss, namely, growth and improvement, the drift and 
motion of all things, and the beautiful order in which 
they move when the eye sweeps over them in great 
masses. For all things " work together for good," 
and if we could count everything, we should know 
that the world is a little better to-day than it was yes- 
terday; or that if there be a halt in it, proofs are not 
lacking that it is gathering strength to move again 
and better. But besides missing much joy, these ill- 
seers become joyless in themselves, for after no great 
time they become of the same dark hue which they 
behold everywhere. Says Plutarch: " As dogs bark 
at all persons indiffcrentl}', so, if thou pcrsccutest 
everybody that offends thee, thou wilt bring the mat- 
ter to this pass by thy imprudence, that all things will 
flow down into this imbecility of thy mind as a place 
empty and capable of receiving them, and at last thou 
wilt be filled with nothing but other men's mis- 
doings." The mind must grow like what it contem- 
plates. Therefore, artists fill their rooms with beau- 
tiful objects, pictures, statues, elegant shapes and har- 



Of Seeing Good Things 41 

monious colors, all set to heighten each other and 
inspire the mind by beauty. Now, if this power of 
beauty be withdrawn, the mind becomes dry and 
starved; and if it be given ugliness to feed on, it 
grows unhealthy. They who fasten on the bad when 
the good is by, suffer a sickness which grows fast, 
and become, like a plant in the dark, pale and prone. 
As many little weights will make a huge mass at last, 
and as perpetual slight blows at last will tear anything 
to pieces, so it is impossible to say what misery and 
injury persons make for themselves who have eyes 
only for troubles, failures, blemishes. This kind of 
sight brims also with vanity and presumption; for 
such a person must view himself as far above others; 
else how dare he walk abroad and show such a bun- 
dle of faults and blots as others appear to him withal ? 
Persons who take the bad things of life when the 
good is by them are worse in another point than the 
master in Plutarch ; for he at least was sipping his 
bad wine at a solitary meal; but the carpers and 
grumblers and critics at life's board do what they can 
to shame others with being pleased. One has need 
of a strong heart and grateful si^irit to be cheerful in 
such company. Some will have it that this defect is 
altogether in the temperament; but however it be, 
will and reason should be called in, for the reason 
should feel the pain of a sick mind as the nerves the 
torture of a diseased body. There is a great deal in 
habit; but habit, by its nature, may be dealt with by 
reason, since there arc moments aside from the habit 
when we can reflect on it. " If this turn of mind," 



42 Of Side- Lights of IfiteUigence 

says Franklin, " were founded in nature, such unhappy 
persons would be the more to be pitied. But the dis- 
position to criticise and to be disgusted is perhaps 
taken up originally by imitation, and is unawares 
grown into a habit which, though at present strong, 
may nevertheless be cured when those who have it 
are convinced of its bad effect on their felicity." 
Franklin adds this pleasant story: 

"An old philosophical friend of mine was grown from 
experience very cautious in this particular, and carefully 
avoided any intimacy with such people. He had, like other 
philosophers, a thermometer to show him the heat of the 
weather, and a barometer to mark when it was likely to prove 
good or bad, but there being no instrument invented to dis- 
cover at sight this unpleasant disposition in persons, he for 
that purpose made use of his legs, one of which was remark- 
ably handsome and the other, by some accident, crooked and 
deformed. If a stranger at first interview regarded his ugly 
leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him ; if he spoke 
of it and took no notice of his handsome one, that was suffi- 
cient for my philosopher to have no further acquaintance with 
him. Everybody has not this two-leg instrument; but every 
one with a little attention may observe signs of that carping 
disposition and take every precaution to avoid those affected 
with it. I, therefore, advise those critical, querulous, discon- 
tented, unhappy people if they wish to be respected and 
beloved by others and happy in themselves, they should leave 
off looking at the ugly leg." 



OF SIDE-LIGHTS OF INTELLIGENCE 

Our eyesight is more delicate by a sidelong glance 
out of the corners of the eye than by straightforward 



Of Side-Lights of Intelligence ^% 

vision. Sometimes an intimation of a faint star or a 
delicate nebulous light in the sky will come thus 
aslant; when we look directly, it is gone. The like 
exists in our mental vision. There is a slant look, 
which is to say, a use of other faculties than the cog- 
nitive, by which we have sights of truth, glimpses of 
the real relations of things, gleams of life, which a 
direct gaze of the intellectual powers reveals not. 
Intellectual aptitude makes not the whole of intelli- 
gence; keenness, wit, logical skill, learning, sum 
not up our sources of the knowledge of life. Our 
moral condition is important-meaning by moral a 
vast deal; all, in fact, not called the cognitive powers, 
especially the different modes of emotion, feeling, 
intuition, which bind us to other persons. These are 
love, generosity and many experiences of joy or sor- 
row in the inner relationships of life. I call these the 
side-hghts of intelligence. This is only to say that 
a man is a unit. In exploring truth it is not a part 
of man called the reason that acts, all else lying 
quiescent; but the whole man is busy, and all his 
powers are operative in the understanding of things. 
There is no cogency of argument in which feeling has 
not a part, and no perception, discovery, insight, 
admiration, in which the whole man, heart, mmd, soul 
and body, religion, love and reason, the mens sana in 
corf ore sano, are not combined. Foe makes the pro- 
found remark about a character in one of his analyti- 
cal stories (I quote from memory): « The Count is a 
mathematician; as a mathematician alone he will rea- 
son ill. But he is also a poet; as a mathematician and 



44 Of Side-Lights of Intelligence 

poet he will reason exceedingly well." This but says 
that true reasoning is in looking at the universe with 
the sum of ourselves. As, if we looked out of doors 
only with the form sense of the eye, and not with the 
color sense, we should see, j'et but in part and often 
untruly, so if we look into the skies or over the earth 
with the mathematical eye of the mind, or philosoph- 
ical, or ethical, the poetical sense being shrouded or 
absent, we shall see not only poorly but untruly. 
This is a deep truth in morals. No intellectual power 
can make clear the eye which selfishness or gross- 
ness has befogged. Call Goethe Olympian, Carlyle 
grandly rugged and earnest; but the selfishness of 
both, the infidelities of one and the rude ungrateful- 
ness of the other, were vitiations of their intelligence, 
whereof came as much incomj^etence to see the round 
inii verse as direst stupidity could be; the which very 
truth Carlyle has uttered, saying, " Hast thou con- 
sidered how Thought is stronger than Artillery 
parks, and (were it fifty years after death and martyr- 
dom, or were it two thousand years) writes and 
unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains, 
models the world like soft clay? Also, how the 
beginning of all Thought worth the name, is Love, 
and the wise head never yet was without the gener- 
ous heart? " Give genius its due, whatever that may 
be; but it is worth considei-ing whether wholeness of 
growth and completeness of soul be not the rarest and 
clearest drops of genius which the skies distill, reflec- 
tive of themselves. Epictetus says: " You will fail 
least in judgment when you fail least in life." 



Of Slde-Lights of Intelligence 45 

Touching these side-lights of intelligence, this inci- 
dent befell me. An influential writer said to me that 
he had no sympathy with pictures. " If I have the 
reality," he said, " why should I wish a picture of it? 
There is that tree, a beautiful object; but, having the 
tree, I care not for a little copy of it on paper." The 
moi*e I brooded on the remark, both the stranger and 
the more meaning it seemed to me. I wondered 
whether there was not therein a clew to a mental 
deficiency which would help explain why, as I think, 
that writer lingers satisfied in a little transient taveini 
or stay-house of theology, half-way up the mountain 
of liberty, of reality and of naturalness. I have made 
no analysis, but sure I am there is lacking somewhat 
in the cognition of facts when that side-light of intel- 
ligence is shut — the side-light, namely, of the sense 
of the beauty and value of passing nature through 
the mind of man, of the co- working of the human 
and the divine in the transcription of beauty from the 
earth and from the sky, of the union of the individual 
and the personal. Mere literary skill and power may 
be not intelligent in the broad and noble sense, because 
it may serve a record of only what can be seen 
straight in front, with all the delicate gleams absent 
that visit the side-glance of the mental eye; hence 
barren, unreflective of the truth of things, seeming to 
gleam, but, like painted fire, unmoving, unreviving. 

If a man be not a conglomerate of faculties which 
act one after the other, as a machine puts forth first 
one arm and then another shaft, and then some other 
part until the action return again to the first, but a 



46 Of Side- Lights of Intelligence 

unity, the whole acting in every act — if this be so, I 
say, it is the balance, the sanity, the scope of the mind 
which give seeing power. Nor is there anything 
which the mind can do that belongs not in everything 
it does. If a man be not woman-loving, or a woman 
be not man-loving, or both be not child-loving, there 
is no question whether being thus deficient they are 
impeded in their intelligence, but only whether there 
be deficiency, that is, whether these qualities which 
they lack are natural and belong to the complete 
human being. For if so they be, it is certain that by 
lack of them intelligence is barred or turned awry in 
some way, so that either it can not go so far, or will 
take a crooked course. No matter in what way the 
soul be partial, whether one quality or another be 
lacking, the effect is the same, that intelligence halts. 
If nature be beneficent and we selfish, cheerful and 
we morose, beautiful and we have no eye for the 
color or the shape of beauty and no ear for the har- 
monies of it, if nature be marvelous and we puffed 
up, sublime and we never humble, infinite order and 
we groping for miracles, we are mental Ishmaelites, 
living in barrens, though mounted by wit on swift 
steeds. 

Emerson says, " Poetry is the one verity;" and in 
another place, " Genius is a larger imbibing of the 
common heart;" and again, "There is in all great 
poets a wisdom of humanity which is superior to the 
talents they exercise." This brings the law of experi- 
ence into this matter. So far as we lack any element 
belonging to humanity, we miss the experience 



Of Individuality 47 

pertaining thereto, and experience is a great teacher. 
Thus we fail to see things rounded as they are, in the 
order of their relations together; but see them only 
in fragments, or with some things dropped from 
their places; which is as if keys or wires be broken 
from an insti-ument, so that no effort can draw full 
harmony from it. Matthew Arnold has it that 
" poetry is at bottom the criticism of life." If this 
be mated with Emei'son's sayings that " poetry Is 
the one verity " and the poet's faculty *' is only a 
larger imbibing- of the common heart," plainly the 
poet's intelligence will fail if there be lack of quali- 
ties to take part in the whole circle of life's experience. 
Therefore, seek not wits, sharp-minded people, the 
strong, the brilliant, the expressive, the intellectual; 
but complete persons, who have a symmetry like 
architecture. 

In sum, knowingness is wholeness; completeness is 
power to understand. This is the thing to remem- 
ber, that no matter on what side of us a limitation be, 
though it seem as far away from the understanding as 
the poles are asunder, it is sure to report itself in a 
divided intelligence. It is one portal of sight dark- 
ened, one side-light veiled, one comprehension cut off 
from comprehensiveness. 



OF INDIVIDUALITY 

I WILL distinguish individuality from individualism, 
and then treat of individuality in two kinds, in opm- 
ion and in behavior. 



48 Of Individuality 

As to the distinguishing of individuality and indi- 
vidualism it is important but no less easy, for they are 
very different — indeed, opposites. Both may mean a 
fact or a doctrine. Individuality as fact, lies in a char- 
acter of marked difference from others, a mind not 
molded to a pattern or hewn to a shape. As a doc- 
trine, individuality is the principle that diversity of 
character in unity of co-operation is right and natural. 
Individualism is the direct opposite of Individuality, 
as I have said ; as a fact, it is withdrawal from asso- 
ciation into independent action, and ipso facto it is 
similarity or level likeness of character; for it is cer- 
tain that as men drift away from each other by dis- 
association of functions, they must drift Into a generic 
level of likeness, like the brutes. As a doctrine, indi- 
vidualism is the assertion that this sameness of nature 
with uncooperative separation Is the right and natural 
way. 

With little argument I will dismiss individualism; 
for though it boasts much with clamor, it offers little 
with reason. What need to declare It anti-social, as 
Marcus Aurelius would say, and therefore lacking in 
a good half of piety? Paul, Socrates, Saadi, Seneca, 
have said, and almost in the same words, that men are 
limbs of one another and members of one great body, 
and if one part suffer all suffer with it. Socrates 
speaks thus in Xenophon's Memorabilia: " When 
brothers are unkind it is as If the two hands which 
God has formed to aid each other, neglecting these 
duties, should hinder each other; or as if the feet, 
formed by God to act together, should forget this 



Of Individuality 49 

office, and obstruct each other. Now God hath 
designed brothers to be of greater service to each 
other than hands or feet or eyes or other members 
which he hath given in pairs to men." And though 
this be addressed to two brothers by blood, who were 
at variance, yet the sage would say the same to all 
men in moral brotherhood; and the like did Cicero 
after him. Against individualism I make four counts: 
first, that when men are gathered in numbers they 
make perforce an organism, since they are not merely 
gregarious, like dumb creatures or those who have at 
most but few gestures or cries by which to communi- 
cate; but inventive, co-operative; in which state what 
hurts the organism harms every part thereof. When 
is anything useful to a part that is not good for the 
whole? Marcus Aurelius says: *' Whatever is not 
good for the swarm is not good for the bee." Sec- 
ondly, I count it as against individualism, that every 
one has need of others; for of all creatures man is 
most incomplete in solitude. When either in mind or 
body had he parts, qualities or tools to suffice for him- 
self.'' As Seneca has said, *' No one has strength 
enough of his own to rise out of folly ; one must give 
another the hand." But Seneca has a wider saying, 
which is my third count against individualism, namely, 
"I owe more to humanity than to the individual"; 
which Schefer, the German, puts thus: " It takes all 
mankind to make a man, and each man when he dies 
takes a whole earth away with him." It is to the 
honor of human nature, and what can be said of no 
other creature, that the best fruits of all together sut- 



5© Of Individuality 

fice for no more than to make each one what he may 
be. My fourth count is that it is a noble thing and 
human-Hke to work for others; and how is that pos- 
sible but by working with others, standing close with 
them and not apart? It is a noble saying of Seneca, 
" I fight not for my own liberty, but for my country's; 
not to live free, but to live among freemen." There- 
fore, I dismiss individualism, as I have said, by these 
reasons, and with the authority of the greatest and 
best men. 

Now, as to individuality, by virtue of which men 
cleave close to each other in associative action, and the 
closer they cleave the more and more do they differ 
in character — as to this I say (the crowning fact and 
glory of nature in the unfolding or outcoming of 
mind), I am to consider individuality in opinion and 
then in behavior. 

Individuality in opinion, or, what is more, in think- 
ing, is simply one with thinking at all; for he who 
thinks thereby looks at the thing or the fact itself and 
takes its measure by observation directly, not content 
with the measures of others, and still less tying him- 
self to the authority of their measures or following 
their currency or convention in things which he has 
to examine. This is a lofty attribute, whereof a poet 
says: 

" Whoever lives is individual, 

Without a copy or a precedent, 

And holy, even to God." 

Now, individuality in thinking, or in the result 
thereof, which is conviction, should have three quali* 



Of Individuality 5 1 

ties, and without these it is not a concrete process of 
thinking, as hght moves, but a wild leaping, as light- 
ning jumps from one to another point, dazzling with- 
out illumining, and if it strike, rending. These three 
qualities arc: First, that the thinking be slow and 
careful; secondly, that it move with reverence for the 
thinking of others either past or at hand; and this 
includes two points — namely, reverence for the wise 
and good, either close by now or anywhere, and rev- 
erence for the common drift of the human mind 
through all the ages. There is a beauty of counsel- 
taking, and of deferring, waiting, listening, weighing 
what others say, and looking at what they do for 
instruction's sake, which is a very fair sight. Zeno, it 
is recorded, thought it " a proof of greater virtue to 
adopt the good advice of another than originally to 
conceive what is just and right." And Epictetus said 
likewise, " It is beautiful to yield to the law, to the 
ruler, or to the wiser man." This beauty is individu- 
ality of thought holding its right gait, and therefore 
graceful. " Without the individual," one has written, 
" society is a mush or a war." Yes, assuredly ; because 
then, either all are alike, in a level that yields noth- 
ing, as it is dead, or else there is strife of the many 
who are similar against the few who are different, or 
a war among all, as with the brutes. But It Is the 
individual close leaning toward others by individual- 
ity, and not withdrawing himself into a den by indi- 
vidualism, which raises society up from a strife and 
from vacancy; wherefore the same writer says with- 
out contradiction, " We are all alike; this equality is 



52 Of Individuality 

not of merit nor of greatness — rather of our nothing- 
ness ; equal we are in God, in being by our individual 
selves nothing." 

The third quality of Individuality in thinking is 
courage of conviction when once by the other two 
qualities conviction be reached ; for then is needed as 
great vigor of maintenance, of argument, of declara- 
tion, and perhaps of action, as before of slow and rev- 
erential motion. Of this Sidney Morse has written 
wisely : 

"Where the individual can form no conviction he must 
manage as lie can — drift and take pot-luck, as the saying is. 
But if he reach a conviction he must abide bj it, let all other 
individuals take other paths. He need not be willful or rash; 
he can rest on his judgments until he finds that they abide ; he 
may or may not ' vote urgency ' for his action : but in the end, 
he can not be false to his own judgments and remain a man, 
let the w^orld laugh, weep, or damn." 

Conflict in important practical things when it lifts a 
dire head, as sometimes it does, driving men to pas- 
sion and pain, comes not from individuality or any 
assertion thereof, though never so bold, but indeed, 
from a lack of the same; that is, not from individual 
thinking, but from non-thinking. For if all think, 
agreement comes at last, because of three forces 
which thought has; first, that the thinking of all will 
correct every one, and conversely that the thinking of 
every one adds its sum to the thinking of all ; secondly, 
that they who think most always respect most the 
thoughts of others, and thus the thinking of no one 
is lost, but sinks into all deeply; thirdly, that much 



Of Individuality 53 

thinking perforce discovers at last the real fact, which 
then enforces agreement and brings all minds to itself. 
Now when I turn from individuality in thinking to 
the same in behavior, the point needs more exposi- 
tion; for the question arises, what is individuality of 
action, and how differs it, if in any way, from mere 
peculiarity or mannerism pushed to eccentric conduct? 
And in point of behavior, what are the claims of the 
whole of society and the claims of each part thereof, 
and the due balance between them ? If one say that 
every person is most valuable wherein he is most him- 
self and not another, as I remember that Emerson 
somewhere has stated, who will gainsay? But if 
another declare that every person is most valuable 
wherein he is most in agreement and in union with 
the whole, and not only with the whole of this time 
but of all times, and not only with all times on this 
earth but with the nature of things everywhere, again 
who will gainsay? Yet at first seem these not differ- 
ent and opposed ? Otherwise, what is the unity which 
puts not out individuality? Or what the diversity 
which interferes not with unity? But it is only at 
one glance that any contradiction appears herein; to 
the long look, the coherence is to be seen easily ; as, 
if one behold a double star with but a glimpse through 
the telescope, it will appear like two bodies all parted, 
but with a long look will be seen the center of grav- 
ity and their revolution around each other by which 
they are tied in one. By this similitude, we may be 
led justly to take a hint from an engine in answering 
how individuality and unity agree. For each part of 



54 Of Individuality 

a good machine is strictly individual in shape and in 
function, but as it tends to the common aim of all the 
parts, the unity is unbroken, being the gathering of 
all the parts into the action of the machine, one in 
object and result, but multiplied in kinds and motions. 
So diversities or individualities of mind put not unity 
out so long as they tend to the natural end which is 
the purpose of the whole. Therefore let a man's 
manners be as peculiar as they may, if they tend to 
good will, to social usefulness and to the good of all 
the race, then his individuality is no breach of unity, 
but only, as I may say, a variety of language, or a 
special dialect in which unity speaks. It matters not 
in behavior that a man gives no special reason for his 
acts or manners which are peculiar, for they are sim- 
ply his idiosyncrasies. Let him say boldly it is a 
whim, if so he wish; for if there be no reason against 
his manners except that they are not common, if they 
disturb not the I'easonable aims and rational character 
of the whole, and are not against social worth, then 
they disturb not tuiity, how peculiar soever. And it 
is to be wished, I think, that there were less of level 
convention in our manners; for thereby what great 
variety would be added to life, and of a kind very 
entertaining as well as charming. What then are the 
things in which a man may be individual in behavior 
without reproach ? Plainly, the things which are only 
modes of expression of the rightful purpose of the 
whole, or different motions in a work which is the 
continuity of the whole, as in the engine the same 
end may be gained by this motion or by that or by 



Of Questions of Heroism 55 

another. But in the aim of his work, or in the mean- 
ing of his expressions, let no man differ recklessly 
from others without studying whether also he differ 
from the whole. For he ought to agree with the 
drift of all times and with the nature of things, which 
is good and holy. 

Of individuality I conclude, that it inheres as to 
function not in separation, but in association, and not 
in independence, but in interdependence; and as to 
thought, in self-accountableness, but joined with rev- 
erence for all others ; and as to behavior, in absolute lib- 
erty, so the social aim be not abused. Thus in all, in 
function, in thinking, in behavior, individuality is the 
final finishing and supple shaping of a part which fits 
by its special figure into the operation of the whole. 



OF QUESTIONS OF HEROISM 

The Roman consul Brutus has had great fame 
because he condemned his two sons to death for con- 
spiracy against the State. In this austere judgment 
some modern judges have followed him. Like to 
this is a storied scene on an English naval vessel, 
wherein a man was commanded to flog his son 
and obeyed. This is a Spartan trait, like that which 
Plutarch records of the Spartan women, when the 
messengers came home from the fatal battle of Leuc- 
tra. The mothers whose sons were slain in the bat- 
tle openly rejoiced, cheerfully made visits, and met 
triumphantly in the temples; but they who expected 



56 Of Questions of Heroism 

their children home, having heard that they had sur- 
vived, vv^ere silent and troubled. It is a question 
whether these deeds be truly heroic. It w^ill honor 
our nature to say that this Spartan virtue is no virtue, 
but only a distorted growth wherein as much force is 
taken ofiE the side of love as is laid on the side of 
endurance, and as much withdrawn from the private 
as is added to the public devotion, making the char- 
acter an unsightly hollow on the one side and excres- 
cence on the other. The private sphere, where the 
affections run, has its laws and its claims to loyalty as 
much as the public sphere where we act as citizens. 
There will be often a question what the right action 
is, and whether the private or the public claim shall 
prevail. But this can not be decided in advance for 
every case by one rule; and as, if claims conflict, 
always there will be a question, so sometimes it may 
be a nice or difficult one. If the stern Roman judge 
was brought to the point whether as a magistrate to 
condemn his sons, or to resign because he was their 
father, that some other might condemn them who 
could do the State justice and the heart of the father 
no violence, why should he not abdicate, since he 
would preserve the honor of the gentleness of the 
soul and do the State no wrong? In truth, he would 
bear double testimony, being a witness for love by his 
refusal to sentence and a witness for justice by his 
abdication of office. Thus did, though in a small 
case, a Keeper of the Seals in France; for when the 
King, with his own hands, affixed the seals to a cor- 
rupt pardon of a prisoner, the Minister refused to 



Of Questions of Heroism 57 

take them again, saying, " The seals have twice put 
me in a position of great honor: once when I received 
them, and again when I resigned them. In the one 
instance, the honor was from the law and the King; 
in the other, from justice and from the King of 
Kings." So might the Roman judge have descended 
from the judgment seat, saying witli dignity, " This 
office has twice honored me — once when I took it, 
the honor being from my country, and now when I 
resign it, the honor being from the humanity within 
me." 

The question in general is this: How much do we 
belong to the whole, and how much to each house- 
hold and to each heart? The household exists not 
merely for the whole, but for itself also; and the 
whole not merely for itself, but for the household 
also; and each has its domain. That there may be a 
private heroism of endurance above any general 
obligation will be plain, if we take some cases; for if 
a man shared in a robbery, and then in stress to screen 
himself , denounced his comrade to the law, we should 
call the act treacherous and infamous. For in such a 
case there would be a private law of devotion which 
every honest heart would admit exceeded the public 
claim. John Weiss said well that a wife would be no 
wife in his eyes who would not defend and secrete 
and preserve him if he were pursued for a crime, 
though justly; for herein sacred devotion of one for 
one must exceed the claim of the whole on the one. 
So thought the King of France when Mme. Lava- 
lette helped her husband to escape in her clothes; for 



58 Of Questions of Heroism 

when different officers were excusing themselves 
from blame, the King answered coolly, " I do not 
see that anybody has done his duty, except Mnie. 
Lavalette." 

In all matters touching the heart there are two 
kinds of desert: The desert of fine qualities in gen- 
eral which have a claim to homage from all behold- 
ers, and which a friend has pride and joy in seeing; 
and also especial desert from the friend because of 
private virtues and fidelity that encompass him faith- 
fully. The two do not concur necessarily, and per- 
haps in some cases they will conflict. Then let me 
give what is deserved from me, and let the social 
union attend to its own matters; for, for the time, 
it is not society, with me in it, which is arrayed 
against my friend, but society which is marshaled 
against my friend and me on the other side, where I 
belong with him. This is only to say that the heart 
has rights as inalienable as understanding or judg- 
ment or justice or punishment. To say which is not 
weakness or merely sentiment, but strength and 
thought. There is a story of one of the Old Bailey 
Judges who pointed out a jur3-man to another Judge 
and said: " Look at that man. We shall not have a 
single conviction to-day for any capital offense." But 
this was not to call the man a weak fellow. When 
tears were noticed in Thackeray's eyes, a critic said it 
was conceivable the great novelist had a cold in his 
head but it was better to give him credit for force in 
his heart. So the humane jurj^man might have been, 
indeed, a bit of a weakling, but also he might have 



Of Praising- 59 

been a strong man who was able to give feeling its 
due part in judgment. There are dark corners where 
the blind man is better than the man who has eyes, 
because neither can see, but the one has a finer sense 
of touch. So there are dark places of human experi- 
ence where the most shrewd intelligence and cautious 
reason have no sight, but where a tender sense avails. 



OF PRAISING 

I MUST call praising a liberty. It savors, unless 
between near friends, of superiority, or the assump- 
tion thereof, seeming to say that we are proper judges 
and that our commendation is an honor. Therefore 
praising is not to be done by inferiors to superiors, 
except with extreme delicacy and care; and then 
sparingly and in a modest word or two; as by the 
ignorant to the learned, by the lowly in position to 
the high or commanding, especially by the young to 
the old. Nevertheless, press not this too strongly, 
for any one's honest approval or admiration is a wor- 
thy reward for the highest virtue or greatness, if only 
it be a sincere and modest exaltation; nor will any 
seeming greatness be great that scorns the admiration 
of the simple and the true. 

It is a point of good manners to praise, if manners 
be founded in good feeling; for good praising be- 
stows much pleasure. A Frenchman defined polite- 
ness as an art to keep one person from knowing 
that we prefer another person — surely a gentle and 



6o Of Praising' 

reasonable account of good manners, since it would 
make a unit of all companies and leave our prefer- 
ences or endearments where they belong, to private 
moments. So likewise it will be gentle manners if 
we keep another from thinking that he gives us no 
pleasure or merits not our approval, or that we hold 
ourselves above him in any way; and this can be done 
by good praising, for which we must gather, with 
both kind intention and sincere judgment, the things 
m which he has done well. So far good manners 
carry; but, furthermore, we must praise if we will be 
either generous or honest. Emerson says, and nobly, 
" Our very abstaining to repeat and credit a fine remark 
of our friend is thievish." If it be selfish not to give 
what we can, and fraudulent to withhold whdt another 
has earned, then to be unmindful of praising is 
ungenerous, to be unwilling is dishonest. Some per- 
sons are so thievish, indeed, and such collectors for 
themselves, that they deem praise bestowed on others 
as so much withheld from their own merits; but this 
IS a base and miserly envy, which can glorify no 
other's virtue without avaricious pain. 

To praise well is a difficult art, an intellectual and 
moral feat, to which must go delicacy and cultivation 
of mmd, thought and nice perception, and chivalrous 
generosity. How fine was the eulogy of Frederick 
the Great at a state feast, when he withdrew a brave 
Austrian general from the opposite side of the table 
and placed him near the royal seat, saying, « I have 
always wished to see you at my side rather than facing 
me." But, contrariwise, Nicole's compliments were 



Of Praising 6l 

saved from offense only by their comedy. When the 
bashful scholar was summoned to a company by a 
Parisian beauty to grace her hospitality, he retired as 
soon as he could, covering his retreat with clouds of 
fine speeches, in which he informed his hostess that 
her "lovely little eyes" were irresistible; but being 
reproached outside by a friend, who told him he had 
accused the lady of what all her sex thought a defect, 
the dismayed scholar returned abruptly to the com- 
pany, humbly begged pardon for his error, and 
exclaimed: "Madam, I never beheld such fine large 
eyes, such fine large lips, such fine large hands, or so 
fine and large a person altogether in the whole course 
of my life." When a man who usually was mute 
spoke wisely and well, but pleaded at the beginning 
that his habitual silence should excuse his deficiencies, 
a lady said to him afterward: "Sir, I like the speech 
of silent men," which was very elegant praise. So 
said one humble in station to a scholar: "When I 
talk with you I forget you know more than I do." 
Whether to bestow this high praise or to earn It was 
the more admirable may be questioned. Weiss said 
" the gift of appreciation is as divine as the dignity of 
being appreciated." Thus may two sit on a level 
who seem, to outward sight, far parted. But some 
praise is very repulsive. Such is formal praise, insin- 
cere praise, conventional matter-of-course compliment, 
intemperate and coarse commendation which out- 
reaches truth and covers with confusion, public praise 
wherein it should be private, and general praise 
wherein it should be particular and discriminating. 



62 Of Praising 

The one simple rule is this: Praise should be first 
true, that is, temperate and thoughtful; and then gen- 
erous, that is, living and warm. It is well not to 
venture on praise at the moment, for it is a matter 
well worthy of preparation. 

Praise should have regard also to the character of 
the person to be commended, — as whether he need 
encouragement or restraint, enlargement or suppres- 
sion. Some may think praise never should be given 
to the self-satisfied; but this may be questioned; for 
if vanity be very great, praise will add little to it, and 
if the praise be not granted when it is just, there will 
be no room for censure when it will be salutary. 

It is well sometimes to put praise in writing, which 
enlarges our liberty and yet spares the face of our 
friend. Written words are like a tender veil behind 
which we may speak more warmly ; or like the cast- 
ing down of the eyes, which is instinctive when very 
precious things are to be said. Writing may add also 
elegance and wisdom. When Doctor Balguy (I know 
not whether the father, John, or the son, Thomas ; 
but either it might be, for the father had the wisdom 
to burn his sermons that his son might be left to his 
own labors, and the son had the wisdom to profit by 
his father's discretion) once preached from the text, 
"All wisdom is sorrow," he received these lines from 
a hearer: 

" If what you advance, dear Doctor, be true, 
That wisdom is sorrow, how wretched are you ! " 

Praising is a great privilege of friendship, and 
equally a duty. A privilege, because friends stand 



Of Praising 63 

on that equal ground which makes praising the great- 
est pleasure, and the praise a great boon. And duty, 
because the helpfulness of praise Is so great that to 
be unpraiseful when our friend has deserved well is 
as if we should refuse him our hand in his efforts; 
for to praise him lovingly for what he has done is to 
give him a strong hand in what he shall try to do. 
Sidney Lanier wrote in a letter to a friend, — " I thank 
you heartily for your encouraging commendations of 
my little poem. Much reflection convinces me that 
praise is no ignoble stimulus, and that the artist should 
not despise it." What can be colder, more unlove- 
like, more disappointing and uncherishing than to 
walk beside your comrade, many years perhaps, 
unmindful to cheer his successes or his noble efforts 
with your warm praise for the moment and with yet 
warmer help growing therefrom for the future? A 
friend should so regard his friend in his heail that, as 
Brutus says of Caesar, " His glories are not extenu- 
ated wherein he was worthy, nor his offenses en- 
forced," but kindly turned into correction. It is one 
of the joys of love that the vocabulary of praise is 
Increased by it; for large measures of it may go in a 
look, a touch, and that, too, with the greatest privacy 
In large companies. 

In sum, as praising Is a liberty, let It be modest and 
observant; as it is a justice, let it be rendered; as It 
is a privilege, let It be welcomed; as It is an art, let It 
be studied. 



OF CENSURE 

Censure is first judgment. So in Latin and so in 
English primarily, in sense, however it be in time; as 
in Shakespeare, in Brutus's speech to the Roman 
populace — " Censure me in your wisdom and awake 
your senses that you may the better judge;" wherein 
the meaning is shown in reading if the emphasis be 
laid properly on better. The same appears in censor^ 
which means an officer of judgment either to approve 
or condemn. 

An ancient stoic said wisely, " Men are made better 
by bearing with them, worse by fault-finding." True; 
yet not showing censure either useless or hurtful. 
For petulance, complaining, carping, invective, the 
clattering of a scold in what shape soever, is not cen- 
sure; nor more even is criticism censure, unless it have 
a genius above discontent. For whether it be spite 
or envy or churlishness or whatsover, that makes one 
hard to please, they to whom a fault looks big and a 
virtue little can not censure, even when perchance 
they judge; for no one attends to them. Moreover, 
if it be just to censure wrong, it is still a higher jus- 
tice to be silent unless we can help in finding the 
right. A stoic said wisely, " If thou be able, teach 
others what is right; but if thou be not able, remem- 
ber to be meek on that account." Censure must have 
two parties, and both noble ; for the reprover must be 
high above peevishness, and more lured by a merit 

(64) 



Of Censure 65 

than sharp for a fault; otherwise he is a pretender 
who fingers a sore without ointment; and the one re- 
proved must revere worth and judgment when it is 
before him ; otherwise in effect he is berated, not cen- 
sured. Wherefore some never can censure because 
they enforce no reverence, and some never can be 
censured because they are too vain or too empty to 
pay the reverence. 

By its nature, censure must be rare, because it has a 
greatness which is rare in itself, or comes only on 
great occasions, which are few. Herein lies the wis- 
dom of the stoic, that men are made worse by fault- 
finding, for to notice faults often is to censure never. 
Likewise, indirect reprimand, starting thought and 
leaving it, is very powerful censure. This did the 
English press, after the French refugees had cele- 
brated the death of King Louis with a great revel. 
On the next anniversary of the death of Charles, the 
journals announced, " To-morrow is the anniversary 
of the martyrdom of Charles the First. The French 
are acquainted there will be no ball." The like indi- 
rectness may be given by wit covering the reproach, 
so it fall not into a Pasquin's diversion, for the wit's 
sake, to sport a smart sneer. Then the ambushed 
censure, suddenly bursting forth, can do much. Thus 
a genial wit admonished "a very middling" poet, 
whose humor it was to decry and jeer all other poets. 
When once he cried, vehemently, that he " knew not 
a worse lyric poet than Guillard," "Ah, Chevalier," 
said his friend, " you forget yourself " — laying a gentle 
stress on forget^ as if to reprove the noise of the man- 



66 Of Censure 

ner, but leaving to private discovery the mental em- 
phasis which branded the vanity. Whether it be 
covered by wit or by indirectness, or howsoever, pri- 
vacy is a condition of censure, for public correction 
shames too much to help more. Sometimes many are 
to be joined in the censure, because they have been 
joined in the error. But let there be no witnesses on 
a hill of advantage. 

Censure never can be glad or even willing, for to 
be pleased to blame is horrible, and either malice or 
vanity, which the chided person, though blame- 
worthy, instantly will detect, and which will degrade 
the censure, though just, to presumption or spite. 
Whoso sets off his own good with another's ill has 
an interest in every cause, and can not judge. Says 
Aurelius: "Thou must censure neither with any 
double meaning nor in the way of reproach, but 
affectionately and without any rancor in thy soul, and 
not as if thou wert lecturing him, nor yet that any 
bystander may admire, but when he is alone." Good 
censui-e is a great guide and pathfinder — none better 
— but as it hangs on a right mind in two persons, so 
it leads once more by two paths to humility, which 
seems the soul of all virtues; for if censure be given 
not humbly, it is no censure, and if not taken humbly, 
it is no guide. 

Great censures are among the loftiest scenes of his- 
tory. Such was Nathan's tender parable and stern 
" Thou art the man" to David; and Socrates' defense, 
wherein gloriously he judged his judges; and Jesus' 
censure of the priest's officer: "If I have spoken evil, 



Of Censure ^7 

bear witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou 
me?" Such was Huss's censure of the Emperor, 
burning the royal cheek with shame's embers— a his- 
toric blush, which remembering Charles refused to 
seize Luther, saying: " I wish not to blush like Sigis- 
mund." It was a grand censure and a notable 
moment when John Knox admonished Mary, the 
more that, in contrast, the Queen's haughty repri- 
mand was no better than hard words: "What have 
you to do with my marriage?" she cried, "or what 
are you in this commonwealth?" "A subject born 
within the same," Knox answered, " and albeit I be 
neither earl, lord nor baron in it, yet has God made 
me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profit- 
able member within the same. Yea, madam, to me 
it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as 
may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it doth to any of 
the nobility, for both my vocation and my conscience 
require plainness of me." 

The censure of a friend is the best, for then the 
faithfulness and courage are as dear as they are noble, 
and the manner has two potencies— love's and truth's. 
Plutarch relates Phocion's saying to Antipater: "You 
can not have me for both a friend and a flatterer." I 
saw once a speechless surprise flood a gentle face, 
fading instantly for love's sake; but the censure was 
mighty and never passed— a holy force, a breastplate 
under the cloak. 

Censure and praise are joined powers. He can do 
neither who can not both; for whoso never praises 
will have no credit for his censure, since he lacks the 



6S Of Censure 

brighter half of justice; and if one never censure, 
praise is like a heart, which dies when the head is off. 
Also, whoso is open for praise but not for censure will 
not be quickened by the honor, but only puffed out by 
it; for he thinks not of growth, but of pleasure; 
which he will find in the applause of others, but not 
in painful demands on himself. A man had a friend 
whom dearly he loved, the more that she was a 
woman; for so God has made the two. For a time 
she was good and gentle, and once when she saW that 
he did ill she censured him with so sweet wisdom that 
he rejoiced in her the more. Afterward, because he 
had praised and honored her, she grew vain, showed 
him pride, and made merry at him- When he rea- 
soned with her and besought her, she forsook all 
deference, quoted him for defense raveled shreds of 
philosophy, made light of his words, and threatened 
him. So that no longer he could keep his trust and 
admiration, and therewith perished the joy of his 
affection. Now so it happened that aftei'ward the 
man (for he was a scholar) did something in his work 
which many people valued, and the woman also 
wrote him her applause; but sadly he answered: 
" Your approval is not commendation, nor is your dis- 
approval censure." Mournful, surely; whether just I 
can not argue ; but right in this, that if she had for- 
feited her power to censure, then also her power to 
praise. 



OF FLATTERY 

Flattery, says our lexicographer, is connected 
with flat, and means, first, to rub or smooth down 
with the hand : hence to please or cajole. In a like 
sense the adjective " flat " is used in metaphor, as in 
the saying, " That is flat," meaning certain, imperative, 
unchangeable, as on a flat plain where nothing rises to 
hinder the eye. So in the expression, " a flat denial." 
The Greeks had a like phrase, " a flat or wide oath," 
meaning strong and obligatory. Thus, etymologi- 
cally, when one is flattered successfully, then comes a 
flat or open state in which one is seen plainly at the 
shameful point and truth of the weakness, like any- 
thing on a level plain which cannot be hid. 

Flattery itself is not so plain always as its success. 
It has a cunning which lackeys it as well as wit 
squires sarcasm or ridicule serves humor; nay, even it 
may be put forward in pretense when the purpose is 
to jeer under shadow of it. It fell to a humble friar 
to preach before a cardinal (so runs it in Peignot's 
Predicaioriana^ by my memory, for I have not the 
book by me), and the great man was astonished at the 
ease and courage of the humble monk, and questioned 
him thereon. " It is easily explained," said the friar, 
" for when I learned that I was to preach before your 
Eminence I repeated my sermon many times to a bed 
of cabbages, among which was a red one, and that 
accustomed me to your presence." Now, this, indeed, 
(69) 



yo Of Flattery 

might be rustic simplicity, doing true homage (though 
in so foolish a way) which, perhaps, the cardinal 
might take in such spirit as did Theseus " the intents 
extremely stretched" of the hard-handed men; 

" Our sport shall be to take what they mistake, 
And what poor duty can not do, 
Noble respect takes it in might not merit; 

And in the modesty of fearful duty 
I read as much as from the rattling tongue 
Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity 
In least speak most to my capacity. " 

But if the friar's was not such a simplicity, then a flat 
impudence, craftily cloaked. Not like this, but a plain 
jeer, was Swift's shrewdness when preaching on 
pride. He said : " My dear hearers, there are four 
kinds of pride: pride of birth, pride of fortune, pride 
of beauty, and pride of intellect. I will speak to you 
of the first three ; as to the fourth, I shall say nothing 
of that, there being no one among you who can pos- 
sibly be accused of this reprehensible fault." But 
whatever the friar intended by his cabbage-head, the 
pulpit, though often faithful against power, sometimes 
has worn skirts not clean of flattery before high 
persons. It is told of the Third George that he 
commanded the clergy called to preach before the 
court to pay him no compliment, saying " that he came 
to chapel to hear the praises of God and not his own." 
Pulpit flattery sometimes either has been very ven- 
turesome or has had the shrewd knowledge to count 
on a vast appetite and digestion in the audience, A 



Of Flattery 71 

Capuchin, preaching before Louis XIV. at Fontaine- 
bleau, began with: " My brethren, we shall all die," 
and then flattered the King thus amazingly: "Yes, 
sire, almost all of us shall die " — broad to the point of 
clownishness. More ingenious was the gray friar 
preaching before an archbishop whose family name 
was Levi^ on the subject of the Trinity : " It would 
seem to me impossible, my Lord," said the friar, " to 
succeed in a theme so lofty if I did not avail myself of 
the intercession of madame, your cousin^ by saying to 
her Ave Maria^"^ In contrast, thus spoke the Father 
Seraphin to Louis: "Sire, I am not ignorant of the 
custom which requires me to salute you with a com- 
pliment; but I beg your Majesty to excuse me from 
it; I have looked through the Holy Scriptures for a 
compliment, and I have been so unhappy as not to 
find a single one." 

Flattery has the weakness of all lies, the meanness 
of treacherous ones and the cowardice of small ones. 
For seldom it can plead great occasion or object, being 
commonly no more than a complaisance; but if it have 
an object, then flattery is the taking crafty advantage 
of weakness, which honor holds odious. Either way, 
being a lie, it has the seeds of death. But of all lies, 
flattery is either the weakest or the strongest; for 
either at once it is detected, and so is weak past stand- 
ing, or else accepted, and then mighty for injui-y ; for 
what so great hurt to a man as to be kept in a vain, 
empty and absurd error about himself? 

Nature is honest with us; nay, the elements have 
even no rewards for virtue. The sun and rain fall 



'J2 Of Flattery 

alike on the just and on the unjust, the rude wind 
hustles the peer and the plowman the same, and break- 
ing waters balk beggars and kings. " The icy fang 
and churlish chiding of the winter's wind" with 
the same appetite gnaws roughened and pampered 
flesh, as said the banished duke: 

" When it bites ajid blows upon mj body, 
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and saj, 
'This is no flattery;' these are counselors 
That feelingly persuade me what I am." 

Therefore says Plutarch, " I like the observation of 
Carneades, who used to say that young princes and 
noblemen never arrived at a tolerable perfection in 
anything they learned except riding. For their pre- 
ceptors spoiled them at school by extolling all their 
performances and their wrestling masters by always 
taking the foil. Whereas the horse, who knows no 
distinction between a private man and a magistrate, 
betwixt the rich and the poor, will certainly throw 
his rider if he knows not how to sit him, let him be 
of what quality he pleases." 

As nature, so the world is mainly plain with us. 
Only private persons flatter. Therefore, they who 
have been bepraised and lulled to satisfaction in small 
companies or at home, find a cold trial and a fall when 
then they go out into the wide and truthful world. 
Sometimes multitudes seem to flatter, but that is only 
when they beset the very powerful whose might 
stretches widely, as great emperors, or smaller tyrants 
among their own retinue. Even then, really it is but 
a small part of the world that flatters, and for a 



Of Flattery 73 

little time; but over the earth and in duration, the 
plain truth is spoken and character set in its place. 

Flattery has many grades. There are fine kinds 
and coarse. There is skill at it, and again bungling 
and clownish performance. An insidious delicacy of 
flattery is found which, like poison drowned in wine, 
will overthrow the greatest strength, except one 
above appetite for any drink — like the working of 
Decius on Ccesar: 

" I can o'er-sway him, for he loves to hear 
That unicorns may be betrayed with trees, 
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, 
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers; 
But when I tell him he hates tiatterers, 
He says he does, being then most flattered. 
Let me work." 

Sometimes it is a very subtle flattery to ask advice; 
and this some monarchs and captains are said to have 
understood and to have worked therewith. For who 
can withstand the delight of the honor that his judg- 
ment is asked and his reason set in repute? When the 
act is not a deference to wisdom, but a playing on folly, 
it is wrong, mean, false, though it wear an innocent 
look. But well, when so much respect for human 
nature fills us that we can ask the thoughts even of 
the simple, and weigh them seriously ; well, too, and a 
great power indeed, when we have such sight into 
minds and characters as to know and judge the worth of 
each, and in what way to ask advice or on what points. 

Flattery may be conveyed without speech; but are 
deferential manners flatteries? No, but graces. But 
if toward tlie bad, the frivolous, the tyrannous, then 



74 Of Flattery 

flatteries? No, but only respect for one's own proper 
gentlehood and a right recognition of human nature, 
not bent by the bad specimens thereof before us. But 
I speak of noble, high, sincere manners; for there is 
a behavior which none could describe to blame it, nor 
catch to count its false elements, but which is like a 
brimming vessel of bad drugs spilling everywhere. 

It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition 
or disposition is open to flattery ; for poison would not 
be spread if the rats ate it not. There are two ways 
to be flattered. First, to be delighted with joraise with- 
out reference to our quality of work and without 
thought of what we deserve; or secondly, to be elated 
or puffed in our own esteem by it, so as to believe our- 
selves as fine as we are cajoled to believe. The first 
always will take the second with it; for no one will 
be charmed by praise unqualified by work unless de- 
luded as to his value. But perhaps the second may 
exist without the first; for though very vain and 
puffed and aiming at self-exaltation, yet one may 
really work for the credit, to compel it by perform- 
ance; and that is nobler than the other, because, 
though a bargain for a mean motive, yet the payment 
is honest. Now, as there are two ways to be flattered, 
so there are two elements in work, — the work-mo- 
tive itself, and also the desire for praise among our fel- 
lows. Both these are right; for who will not be glad 
to be commended by human beings if he respects hu. 
man nature? But one of them is the nobler, which is 
the simple work-motive, the wish to do some grand 
thing, or to do anything faithfully, for its own sake. 



Of Flattery 75 

Now whoever more feels the less noble of these two, 
whoever thinks more of striding the labor to ride it 
unto praise and honor than of bringing the work to its 
greatest in singleness of spirit, he is open to flattery. 
This is the mind that may be cajoled, this the char- 
acter that can be v^orked on by the sly and skilled. 
The fault falls under the general meanness of taking 
something for nothing. For whoever thinks more of 
the praise than of the work, surely will be willing to 
give as little work as will get the praise, and take all 
the offered renown without shame, though but little 
deserving it, or not at all. And as such a person will 
have no lofty ideal of his w^ork to strive for, dream 
of, love, it is likely he will take himself indeed to be 
as fine as he is told; and so he will be flattered in both 
ways. 

In fine, it is wholesome wisdom to fear flattery and 
guard oneself warily; for such a lie is not only a foe 
but ambushed. And as a man truly can have no enemy 
harder to combat than himself, so there is nothing in 
himself more difficult to overthrow than the sly whis- 
per of a soft falsehood. We have need to examine 
ourselves as to La Rochefoucauld's saying, " Men 
sometimes think they hate flattery, but they hate only 
the manner of it." We beware of an enemy who is 
both very dangerous and very hard to recognize; but 
this the flatterer is. The having many assured friends 
and the certainty that those who stand nearest and 
make the dearest claims, are true, is the royal compen- 
sation of poor and humble place. One rule may be 
set: Turn strictly from whoever commends you above 



>j6 Of Govcr/tmcfif 

your own secret approval, or for what you condemn. 
Besides, who that is used to employ one sort of lies, 
will stop at others? Therefore, the flatterer is also a 
detractor. Flattery and evil-speaking, says one of the 
brothers Ilare, " are, as the phrase is, the Scylla and 
Charybdis of the tongue; only they are set side by 
side, and few tongues are content with falling into one 
of them; snch as have once got into the jaws of either 
keep on rnnning from one to the other. Those who 
are too fair-spoken before you are likely to be foul- 
spoken beliind you." Therefore, llattery has a double 
frightfulness, that it weakens ourselves in virtue and 
quickens our neighbor in misrcporting us. It 
makes us bad and to seem still more bad — a very 
witch's extract which turns into two venoms, vanity in 
our own souls and slander in our neighbor's. 



OF GOVERNMENT 

I Wii.i. speak first of the best government ideally; 
secondly, of the best possible, and how to obtain the 
same. 

The best government ideally is the dictatorship of 
the best and wisest person; and if that person be not 
only wisest and best of the people as they are, but 
truly good and wise, and not in comparison with 
others as men see, but in true goodness and wisdom as 
God sees, then goveriunent by his will wouUl be not 
only the rule of the greatest goodness and wisdom, but 
of these same in their most unhindered way; and this 



Of Government 77 

government would be the strongest, the best and the 
most free. Such a dictatorship would not be govern- 
ment by individual will, but by universal nature and 
by perfect excellence appearing in the purposes of the 
governor; his will would be mighty because express- 
ing a law, first over it and then in it. To like effect 
Samuel Johnson says of the Chinese government: 
" We must distinguish the imperial sway from the 
absolutism of a personal will. The Emperor, whose 
dress in the old time was covered with emblematic 
figures of sun and moon, dragons and insects, mount- 
ains and streams, a composite type of all powers, has 
this universality purely as a symbol of the State, 
which means, after the ideal of the family, providence 
and obedience in their simplest and broadest sense." 
This, to interpret more plainly, means that the Em- 
peror is not to go his own way willfully, but to will 
the way of nature loyally. Ilencc, regulations would 
be needless, and even hindering; for what regulation, 
or even what numbers of them, can apply to all cases 
and forecast all questions which must be judged ? But 
a wise, holy and natural will regulates everything at 
the instant according to need and nature. Therefore 
an old poem of the Chinese said: " A noble law is the 
Emperor Wen's virtue; daily it gives peace to the 
four regions. If that be so, what need of laws ? I 
have heard that when kingdoms are about to go down 
they have many laws." Plainly, if a country be 
enmeshed in laws, it is because there is no wisdom 
able to judge things, and no will that can be trusted 
unharnessed. I confess I love to roam among the 



yS Of Government 

stories of the old Caliphs, as the great Haroun ; for 
though it be all romance, mythical lore, that they used 
to visit under cover of night or under shield of dis- 
guises, the haunts and public houses, and the homes 
of the people, to see with their own eyes what was to 
be cherished, what restrained, what cured, neverthe- 
less, to me it is a pleasing romance, and to abundant 
multitudes a precious lore, having in it, I dare to 
think, a high and glorious ideal of government. 
Some great kings in the more sober West, and gov- 
ernors under them, to a degree have done the like — as 
I have read, for instance, of the great Frederick of 
Prussia. Confucius gave maxims of government thus: 
" Let there be men got by means of the ruler's char- 
acter, and the government will flourish ; but without 
the men the government ceases." " If the people 
have no faith in their ruler, there is no standing for 
the State." "Precede the people by your example 
and be laborious in their affairs; do not become weary 
in these things." Again in a sentence he describes 
noble power: "That is good government when 
those who are near are made happy, and those who 
are afar are attracted." Imagination of such fatherly 
government widespread over multitudes with a 
strength which is wisdom and sincerity, always has 
stirred my mind mightily. I wonder not that Schefer 
thus sings of it, calling it " the highest paternal joy:" 

"To be a king, O noblest state of man, 
A father of so many thousand fathers. 
Of mothers, daughters, sons, and darling babes, 
Of mountains full of herds, and forests full 
Of game; of field, valley, meadow, fount and stream; 



Of Government 79 

To be a king! To be a king and a good father, too, 

Of the young roe and of the trembHng hare, 

And of the smallest tree beside the road; 

By wisely ordering and protecting power 

A faithful hand, extended graciously 

O'er all the land, that softly leads o'er night 

Lost ones to hospitable homes; awakes 

From slumber; guides the darling little ones 

Early to school ; flings wide the temple doors, 

A grateful refuge to the burdened soul ; 

Lends helpers to the sick; to poor folk bread; 

Even to the dead secures a holy grave. 

And o'er the grave-mound plants the linden tree; 

That gives to all each highest gift, nor needs 

To take from any what it gives to one. 

So that no single child may have to weep. 

To be a king, supreme paternal joy ! " 
I say, then, that the unhindered will of the wisest 
and best person would be the ideal government; with- 
out danger, for I mean one so wise and good that 
power would be no temptation to selfishness, no 
maker of fractiousness or mover of wrath or enticer 
to wealth, but a heavy weight of responsibility. The 
will of such a magistrate would be the best govern- 
ment, for even if he were not so wise as the combined 
wisdom of all the wise and good of the nation, per- 
force he would be better far, both in purposes and in 
understanding, than the level of all the good and all the 
bad together in a multitude. Moreover, such wise and 
best person would surround himself with the wise and 
good; for, being good, he would have the motive to 
seek such help, and, being wise, the insight to discover 
it. To weigh many minds, to take counsel, and to be 



8o Of Government 

able to be instructed — this, indeed, would be but part of 
his wisdom. Besides, with such informed and pure will 
to rule and to do, officers being appointed by it, and 
places wisely filled, without limit of time, all the 
treacheries of the bad, the jDlots of the selfish, the 
schemes of the needy for places, power, profit, would 
be done away, to the great purification and stability of 
the public service. 

But this ideal best we cannot have, since there is no 
way to discover the wisest and best person, or even 
one very good or very wise with certainty. Then, 
secondly, it is important to devise the best possible 
government as we are. Now, the traits of this we 
shall understand if we attend to the things in the 
ideally best which we have to replace in the best that 
possibly we can frame. These things are, the will of 
the wisest and best ruler, and the wisdom and virtue 
which informed his will. We shall need, therefore, 
first, instead of his will, some wise method and regu- 
lated way, and, secondly, to replace his wisdom and 
virtue, the highest possible average of these qualities 
among the electors who choose the governor. Of 
these in order: 

First, as to the method; that is, the definite and 
regulated way by which the government shall move 
and its appointments occur. Now, no method is wise 
that turns not in every point on fitness. For is there 
any other quality or fact whatever that ought to be 
considered above fitness? Or any other aim of all 
the methods, forms, and procedures of government 
than just to secure fitness in the servants of the peo- 



Of^ Government 8i 

pie ? Now, if this be granted, it will be seen as easily 
that fitness has two parts, namely, fidelity ana ability; 
which I need not argue, for plainly capacity without 
faithfulness will be selfish and hence abusive, and 
faithfulness without ability is ineffectual. If now it 
be the only right and useful aim of methods and forms 
to obtain fidelity and ability in service, is there any- 
thing more ridiculous than time-tenure of office ? For 
by this folly, if once we have got the faithful and the 
strong, soon we dismiss them, and for no reason ex- 
cept (as wittily has been said) astronomical reasons, 
because the earth has reached a certain place in the 
heavens; and against all common sense, for if when 
chosen the officer was faithful and capable, he has 
only become the wiser and better by experience. 
Therefore, if even we be sure to replace him with an- 
other as faithful and able, yet we waste skill and ex- 
perience by the unreasonable change, and must suffer 
in so far while the successor plods during a like time 
to the skill which already once was attained, and 
which the State should have kept to its advantage. 
As to methods and procedures, therefore, I would 
say absolutely, that, as they should aim at nothing but 
fitness, so it is a sheer folly not to provide to keep the 
fitness when obtained, to do away with all chronom- 
eters, whether sidereal or other, in government ma- 
chinery, and keep the people's servants who with 
honesty and with strong mind have learned their 
duties excellently by long practice. 

It is a thorough abuse, and a very fruitful per- 
version, to give public office as a reward. For office 



82 Of Government 

is not a reward of virtue, but a use of it, and to make 
office a payment or meed of anything of another kind, 
as, for example, when a successful general or popular 
idol whatever be raised to magistracy, is a great and 
corrupting injury. For the only question ought to be 
of fitness for public usefulness, and office is not given 
for the benefit of the person, but of the State. 

So much of the wherewithal that should replace the 
will of the wisest and best person, since he can not be 
had. 

As to what we must have instead of his wisdom 
and virtue, this, I have said, is the highest possible 
average among the electors. Now, as before it was 
observed that no method touching public service is 
good that turns on aught but fitness, so excellence 
among electors means fitness for choosing governors; 
and to respect this fitness and to found on it the choice 
of public servants, is the same as to restrict the 
suffrage to those worthy of exercising it. Of this 
point I observe first that such restriction is expedient 
and right. It is expedient: for as, if we wish to get a 
good engine, we shall choose a good builder, so if the 
quality of a public officer be important we shall look to 
the fitness of the electors. The foolish will not choose 
the wise and the bad will not choose the good, for 
this will be to restrain themselves and defeat their 
plots. As to the right to exact qualifications of 
electors, surely it is plain that we must exact it in the 
officer; now if we may require fitness, and examina- 
tions or credentials of fitness, in him who is appointed, 
may we require no test of fitness for appointing him, 



Of Gove7'ninent 83 

or for helping to judge of his fitness? That were 
ridiculous! 

Secondly, as to fitness of electors, I think this ought 
not to be stationary, but marked by improvement, 
progress, higher qualification, and a growing standard 
of fitness to keep pace with the growth, power, edu- 
cation and extension of the state. The qualifications 
of the electors may grow profitably to higher stand- 
ards as civilization grows, just as the standards of 
colleges are raised with the growing complexity of 
social life, the increase of population, discoveries, arts, 
sciences, learning. It is reasonable that what would 
qualify an elector in an abased community, because 
that qualification then would mark the high points 
in a low state, would not qualify in a better condition, 
because then it would grade with the low points 
in a high state. Therefore, there ought to be a 
steady rise in the fitness required of electors, how- 
ever slow or gradual; and this might be effected par- 
tially by having the qualification bear some distinct 
relation to the standards of schools and colleges, so 
that as these rise the other must follow. This, too, 
would tend to the advantage of education by giving a 
stronger motive for the wider diffusion of it. 

Now, thirdly, as to the kind of qualification that 
may be exacted of electors, this should be determined 
by the two elements or parts of fitness as before men- 
tioned, namely, fidelity and ability. On the moral side, 
that is of faithfulness, any immorality should debar 
from suffrage which is of a kind to affect the com- 
munity, to degrade citizenshio, to endanger the public 



84 Of Government 

interests, and hence is known to the laws and banned 
by the statutes on that account, hke vagrancy, idle- 
ness, drunkenness, fraud, licentiousness, gambling; for 
jDlainly no one who breaks the law should help make 
it, nor is he a true citizen of the State whose conduct 
is hurtful to it. On the mental side, that is of ability, 
it will be right that seme age should be named ; and 
though whenever arbitrary limits be set, some hard- 
ship will be wrought in some cases, yet no other way 
is possible; and it is right to set so great an age that 
fairly we may presume fitness of knowledge and self- 
control when it is reached. Next, reading and writ- 
ing should be qualifications, because these are the low- 
est possible standards of the schools, and after this so 
much more of education should be required as is 
plainly within the reach of all who have the moral 
qualifications aforesaid, by reason of the numbers and 
standards of the schools, and all the means of educa- 
tion that flourish in the community. For whoso then 
would not be willing and ready to take advantage of 
the means and acquire the standard would prove 
either a mind unable, or a morality unsound, and so in 
either case a character unfit for the solemnity of 
suffrage. 

But, if any be excluded from voting for such rea- 
sons, will not a State, some will say, be composed 
then of citizens and non-citizens? And is this right? 
For ought not all to be citizens of the commonwealth 
in which certainly they make a part? But this will be 
answered if we ask carefully what a citizen is. Aris- 
totle says a citizen is any one who has a right to 



Of Government 85 

"share in the judicial and executive parts of govern- 
ment," And in anotlier place: "We must either 
affirm that those who share in the community are not 
citizens, or else let these share in the advantages of 
government." But here the philosopher has not de- 
fined w^isely, and elsew^here has corrected himself; 
for, speaking of boys, he says they " are not citi- 
zens in the same manner that men are, for men are 
perfectly so, but boys under some conditions, for they 
are citizens, though imperfect ones;" and in another 
place, "We admit that they are in some respects citi- 
zens, yet not completely so." Now this last is the 
correct notion, and leads to this principle, that when a 
State is based on the participation of all those who 
are fit and worthy to have political function, of such 
a state all persons are citizens by nature whose disa- 
bilities, if they have any at one time, may disappear by 
time itself or by their own efforts, like the young who 
grow older, the ignorant who may learn, the bad who 
may reform. Now, of all who are citizens by nature, 
those are citizens in fact, and do actually exercise the 
function of citizenship, who have attained the fitness. 
But not to exercise citizenship in fact is not the same 
thing as to be no citizen at all, for there still remains 
the citizenship by nature; that is, persons disabled in 
fact are still citizens, but imperfect ones, as Aristotle 
calls boys. This is like the law or nature of a family, 
where all are members, and all well beloved, and the 
family exists for all ; but all are not on the same terms 
of power, the younger with the older, because they 
are not fit as yet. But the younger are wards of the 



86 Of Government 

family, to be trained and admitted to the authority of 
age in time; that is, when age comes, and authority 
and the fitness thereto with it. So citizens by nature, 
imperfect citizens from whatever cause, are wards of 
the State, to be cherished and guided until they be 
brought to completeness of citizenship. 

Notwithstanding that this is very simple doctrine, 
it is wonderful how clamorous are people against it. 
Wherefore, I will ask, should public power be the 
only thing for which fitness is not consulted ? Should 
a function in the State be cast into the air to fall on 
whom it may, and be the only thing which thus men 
toss about to take its chance? Rather contrariwise. 
Political power of all things should be vested most 
jealously, and with those worthy to exercise it ; that is, 
capable of judging and acting for the common good. 
Aristotle saj^s: 

"The political state is founded not for the purpose of men's 
merely living together, but for their living as men should; 
for which reason those who contribute most to this end, de- 
serve to have greater power in the State than others." 

Algernon Sidney teaches the same, much at length, 
in many places of his " Discourses Concerning Gov- 
ernment." He says : 

" Magistrates are distinguished from other men by the 
power with which the law invests them for the public good. 
He that can not or will not procure that good destroys his own 
being and becomes like to other men. In matters of the great- 
est importance detiir diffniori is the voice of nature; all her 
most sacred laws are perverted if this be not observed in the 
disposition of governments; and all are neglected or violated if 
they are not put into the hands of such as excel in all manner 



Of Government 87 

of virtues; for they only are worthy of them and they only 
can have a right who are worthy, because they only can per- 
form the end for which they are instituted." 

And in another place Sidney says: 

"That equality which is just among equals is just only 
among equals. But such as are base, ignorant, vicious, sloth- 
ful, or cowardly, are not equal in natural or acquired virtues 
to the generous, wise, valiant and industrious, nor equally use- 
ful to the societies in which they live ; they can not, therefore, 
have an equal part in the government of them ; they can not 
equally provide for the common good ; and 'tis not a personal, 
but a public benefit that is sought in their constitution and con- 
tinuance." 

And again: 

"Law, which is said to be written reason, can not justly ex- 
alt those whom nature, which is reason, has depressed, nor de- 
press those whom nature has exalted. It can not make kings 
slaves nor slaves kings without introducing that evil which, if 
we believe Solomon, and the spirit by which he spoke, the 
earth can not bear." 

In which remark Sidney refers to the saying in the 
thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, that " a servant vv^hen 
he reigneth " is something " which the earth can not 
bear." 

Thomas Hughes mentions, following Asser, the 
King's friend, that whenever the great and good 
Alfred found an unjust judge who said he had judged 
ill because he knew no better, the King said to him, 
" I wonder truly at your rashness that whereas by 
God's favor and mine you have occupied the rank and 
office of the wise, you have neglected the studies and 
labors of the wise. Either therefore at once give up 
the discharge of those duties which you hold, or en-i 



88 Of Government 

deavor more zealously to study the lessons of wis- 
dom." And Asser goes on to relate: 

"At these words, the aldermen, earls, and prefects would 
tremble, and endeavor to turn all their thoughts to the study 
of justice; so that, wonderful to say, almost all his earls, pre- 
fects, and officers, though unlearned from their cradles, were 
sedulously bent on acquiring learning, choosing rather labori- 
ously to acquire the knowledge of a new discipline than to re- 
sign their functions. But if any one of them, from old age or 
slowness of mind, were unable to make progress in liberal 
studies, the King commanded his son, if he had one, or one 
of his kinsmen, or, if there were no other person to be had, 
one of his own freedmen or servants whom he had before ad- 
vanced to the office of reading, to recite Saxon books before 
him day and night, whenever he had any leisure." 

Aristotle urges this doctrine of fitness to the length 
that if a man, he says, be found very far above others 
in virtue and w^isdom, " it is fit that such a one should 
appear like a god amongst men;" and again: 

"It seems not right to turn out such a person and to banish 
him, nor does it seem right to subject him to trial, for that 
would be like desiring to share the power with Jupiter and to 
govern him. Nothing then remains but what indeed seems 
natural, and that is for all persons quietly to submit to one 
who is thus eminently virtuous, and to let such men be kings 
perpetually in the respective States." 

And in another place on the same subject: 

" Whenever a whole family, or anyone person, shall happen 
so far to excel in virtue as to surpass all other persons in the 
community, then it is right that the kingly power should be 
vested in them ; or, if it is an individual who does so, that he 
should be king and lord of all. * * •* As it would not be right 
to kill or banish such a one for his superior merit, neither 
would it be proper to let him have the supreme power only in 



Of Government 89 

turn; for it is contrary to nature that what is highest should 
ever be lowest ; but this is the case should such a one ever be 
governed by others." 

In this matter we must deal with facts as best we 
can, and we can not marshal them in their rational 
order because some of them we can not discover, as 
they are secrets of human character, in which we 
grope blindly and make many blunders; but much is 
gained if we confess our shortcoming and acknowl- 
edge the ideal of nature, how far soever we be below 
it. To this purpose David Wasson has these wise 
words : 

" We must admit the wise and the stupid, the high-minded 
and the sordid, as political equivalents, since we know not how 
to draw a fixed line between them ; nevertheless, they are moral 
equivalents nowhere, nor more at the polls than elsewhere; 
and those who are not moral equivalents can not have the 
same right to determine the obligations and direct the conduct 
of the community. * * * I grant that unequal men must be 
admitted more or less to equal power. Shear off as we may 
the excesses of ultra-democracy, this necessity will remain; 
but when an external and conventional necessity gets into 
men's heads as an ideal right, it has conquered what should 
command it." 

For lack of this doctrine, or I may say this natural 
allegiance of man to man, according to the marks of 
nature, which is a dignified and honorable allegiance, 
popular forms of government have degraded their 
aims and turned toward equality, not excellence. This 
Aristotle perceived plainly, and said, " An aristocracy 
(by which the philosopher means the power of the best, 
albeit a few) seems most likely to confer the honors 
of the State on the virtuous, for virtue is the object of 



90 Of Government 

an aristocracy, riches of an oligarchy, and liberty (by 
which, I think, the philosopher means equality) of a 
democracy." And again: " In a democracy equality 
is measured by numbers and not by worth." And he 
even lays it down that In a democracy carried to its 
extreme event, the magistrates must be chosen by lot, 
since this is the only complete equality. This trait, he 
avers, led the democracies to establish ostracism, " for, 
of a truth, equality seems the principal object of their 
government. * * * And fabulous histories relate 
that the Argonauts left Hercules behind since they 
were unwilling he should have command of the Argo 
and the other ships because he excelled the other sailors 
in valor." Plutarch has given the same accovuit of the 
custom, saying that the Athenians banished Themis- 
tocles, " making use of the ostracism to humble his 
eminence and authorit}^, as they ordinarily did with all 
whom they thought too powerful or by their great- 
ness disproportionable to the equality thought requi- 
site in a popular government; for the ostracism was 
instituted not so much to punish the offender as to 
mitigate and pacify the violence of the envious, who 
delighted to humble eminent men, and who by fixing 
this disgrace upon them, might vent some part of their 
rancor." And, speaking of the banishment of Aris- 
tides, Plutarch says the people " gave their jealousy of 
his reputation the name of fear of tyranny." I know 
not whether there be anything more contrary to good 
citizenship, more hostile to the honor and prosperity 
of the State, or more servile in itself for whatever soul 
feels it, than such a jealousy of excellence, and such a 



Of Government 9I 

digging down of mountains till there be naught left 
but a plain, without refreshment, which then is called 
equality. To have no instinctive and reverential obe- 
dience, turning heartily toward superior excellence 
with veneration and service, is an odious barrenness of 
spirit, wherein grows nothing but burrs of envy and 
every slavish meanness. It is a brute trait, whereby 
men treat themselves as each a tiger in his den, or as 
wolves in a pack or worms in the ground ; for these, 
each after his kind, are all alike, one tiger to another, 
and every wolf to his fellow, and one worm to all 
worms. Indeed, I would set it forth as a rule of mag- 
istracy, and a proper test for office, that he who 
wants power is the one who should not have it. Com- 
monly, if persons associate much in life, as in partner- 
ship or in marriage, the one who has the most will to 
rule is like to be the one of the least wisdom to rule; 
and I know not why this applies not to collections of 
men, even unto the total collection, which is the state. 
For no one will ever itch to rule who first has learned 
the quiet dignity of obedience. " The moral sense of 
Jotham's wise parable is eternal," says Sidney; "the 
bramble coveted the power which the vine, olive and 
fig tree refused ; the worst and basest of men are am- 
bitious of the highest places, which the best and wisest 
reject." 

Have a care to understand what tyranny is and 
what liberty is; for of a truth I know of no words 
bandied about more loosely, wildly, and I may say 
vilely, than these same, albeit we live in a government 
that can but go sadly astray unless we understand the 



gz Of Government 

nature of these things. Tyranny lies not in any form 
of government, for any form is good and just if it 
agree with the nature of the people and with their 
stage of progress. Tyranny dwells only in a personal 
will broken away from the natural bounds of law. 
Aristotle says a tyrant is simply a ruler " whose object 
is his own advantage and not the advantage of those 
whom he governs." But wherever there is submissive- 
ness to higher law, which is the law of nature, and to 
the laws of the State that express the same, there is 
liberty and not tyranny, be the form what it may. 
Where tyranny exists, it may be in two kinds. First, 
there may be tyranny of purpose. Anything is tyr- 
anny instantly, what form soever the government 
has, when the ruler, or officer howsoever he be 
placed in power, seeks his own good or advantage 
above the common prosperity. Secondly, there may 
be tyranny of method: this is where the governor 
seeks the common good, indeed, but by ways that are 
willful and personal, unmindful of the law which 
should govern his action, whatsoever his motive, and 
which is the law of nature. Both sorts of tyranny 
are bad, but this last kind not so intolerable as the for- 
mer, for it is defect, but without infamy. The tyranny 
of purpose is infamous; and it may exist in full and 
poisonous blossom where the methods apparently are 
very popular, and in a democratic power as well as 
in any other; and the tyranny, whatever the kind of 
State, is the same. 

I much fear that this country has treated liberty 
with as great indecency as if a horse should trample a 



Of Government 93 

rich garden, distinguishing neither beautiful nor fruit- 
bearing plants, neither wood-making nor medicinal, 
thinking them all one for fodder. Democracy has 
become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, 
by which we try men and measures; and this is the 
same as to say that it is merely a word which is pow- 
erful with us, and not the wide and true notion of 
what the word means. But we must define the true 
import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for 
democracy in form is not necessarily people-povv^er in 
fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the 
many and so lead and use the people for their own 
ends. For it is notorious that times without number and 
in countless cases this has been the actual democi'acy 
we have lived in. What is the word that it should be 
a battle cry, or a test of faith, power, liberty, or any 
excellence? Democracy is no more than a name 
of a certain political condition in which all power is 
delegated by popular election, under the votes of all 
the people. " It rests," says Wasson, " upon the doc- 
trine that so far as concerns political matters every 
man is the moral equivalent of every other, therefore 
entitled to an equal voice in determining the obliga- 
tions of the community." The opposite of this is aris- 
tocracy, which, on the contrary, says Wasson, is a 
system that " gives to a limited number a position of 
superiority, determined by birth, not by merit, and so 
continued in hereditary succession from age to age." 
Now of these two, neither makes distinctions of fitness 
for political power, and so, however opposite in form, 



94 Of Government 

they are one in the worst way In which they can 
agree, which Wasson puts thus : 

" These two systems, diametrically opposed as they seem, 
agree in one fundamental particular. By both all natural, all 
real, distinctions are ignored ; in both alike knowledge and ig- 
norance, intelligence and stupidity, nobleness and sordidness, 
are placed on an artificial level. Aristocracy says that some 
men are peers by virtue of their birth from a certain lineage ; 
democracy, that all men are peers by virtue of their birth as 
human beings. Both, in short, are conventional systems, and 
to the extent of the agreement here noted, conventional in the 
same way." 

These words of this calm thinker lead to this con- 
sequence, that a man preaching the doctrine of fit- 
ness for political power, equally would be denounced 
by both parties; for if in a company of aristocrats 
such a man should say fitness and not fortune should 
be the foundation of political power, he would be 
scouted as a democrat; but if among democrats, he 
should reason that not merely residence or being alive, 
or going into a place, or being a man, or any other 
conditions or circumstances, but fitness only, should 
give power in government and participation in politi- 
cal action, he would be hustled as an aristocrat; yet 
his doctrine would be the same. Surely a strange fact, 
and one to make us think carefully where the truth 
may lie ! Indeed we need thought, and no people ever 
more than we now, for truly we are drowned in a 
word out of all reach of the living air of the idea. Was- 
son says: " The system we prefer will lose the service 
of our wits when we suffer the very extremity of our 
predilection for it to confound them ; " and again : 



Of Government 95 

" Institutions, like individuals, have tiieir leanings and limi- 
tations; and as no man is mankind, so no political system is 
the perfect embodiment of political truth. Hence every such 
system, if it is long to endure as a form of productive and pro- 
gressive life, must receive both nourishment and correction 
from the truths it does not contain. From whom is it to get 
those necessary succors.? Only from those of whose heads it 
has not so taken possession that all their thoughts must needs 
bear its impress .-* Only from those who have some sufficient 
power to look about them with fresh, vmbiased eyes, as if in a 
new-made world.'' But what if there are none such.? It is not 
of good augury. When democracy, or whatever system, has 
so far prevailed over the best intelligences that they can speak 
only in its dialect, think only in its moulds, and judge only by 
its standards, it has prevailed quite too far for its own health. 
* * * Hence the need of those who, taking part in our dem- 
ocracy as good citizens, shall do so as men swim in the sea; 
that is, with the head out." 

Unless the head be lifted above the system or 
method, what shall rescue the object of the method 
from the imperfections of the method ? Let it be un- 
derstood that the system is of vast effect, and a bad 
one will overthrow good men because bad men so well 
can work it. I deny not that the most potent fact is the 
moral condition of the people; and perhaps Machiavelli 
went not too far, or but little, in saying, as Sidney 
quotes him, that "where the body of the people is not 
corrupted, tumults and disorders do no hui't, and 
whei-e it is corrupted, good laws do no good." It is 
the common dictum of reformers that laws make not 
the people, but the condition of the people makes the 
laws, and that wise and good law cannot be put into 
act if it be beyond the wisdom and goodness of the 



^6 Of Government 

people. Nevertheless, we must look closely to the 
system which we set up, for this is a tool, and the best 
workman will work but ill with a wretched tool. To 
the system, I say, not merely to this or that man ; for 
the system is as the whole body which is to be kept 
in health, but bad men are the sores of the disordered 
or ill-constituted body politic. In this country many 
times we have dej^osed and banished bad magistrates 
and officers; and whenever we have had good ones, so 
bad is our system that we have deposed these also at 
a certain time; but immediately we have placed othei's 
in power in the same system which has produced the 
bad ones. Now, it is not easy for men to pervert a 
proper tool, or easy for one good tool well fitted for 
its work to make some other kind of thing; as, for 
example, a man may bore ill with an auger or cut but 
poorly with a saw, and then we need a more skillful 
man to use the tools according to their purposes; but 
who can cut with an auger as the saw cuts, or bore 
with the saw as the gimlet bores? So, when we see 
a system lead or fall to certain kind of men, contin- 
ually and after many changes of the men, it is like that 
the system is such as to make them, especially if they 
be extreme examples of their kind, for then the sys- 
tem has had free scope, like a tool well handled. But, 
as says Sidney, " those nations that are more generous, 
who set a higher value upon liberty and better under- 
stand the ways of preserving it, think it a small mat- 
ter to destroy a tyrant unless they can also destroy the 
tyranny." Yet in this foolish way we act, setting 
aside one after another of corrupted magistrates who 



Of Government py 

have despoiled us tyrannously, but leaving the tyran- 
ny itself intact; for our tyranny is a system whose 
soul is the insensate idea of a democracy, that as to 
political power all men are equivalents and each 
counts one, whatever differences of moral or mental 
state there may be, of knowledge, abilities, experi- 
ence, worthiness. 

The ethical effects of government form a great sub- 
ject, for they deserve to be traced in detail and far out 
to their events. I believe it possible that corruption 
in the high places of government may set flowing 
streams of dishonesty throughout the land, till the 
very lad at school shall turn to thieving, as he may 
catch a pestilence from the air. I believe that purity, 
unselfishness and a noble conscience as to political 
responsibility in the high places equally may irrigate 
all the domain, however vast, with rills of ethical re- 
freshment which shall make the whole soil fruitful of 
virtue, peace and wealth. For who can count the 
ways, the thousands of streams — for even the main 
rivers flow by thousands — and then the tens of thou- 
sands of brooks, and their branches again to tens of 
thousands of little rills, which at last break forth be- 
side every door, springs of refreshment of the power 
politic, or else filthy oozings of base plots. James Mill 
has set this in the strong light of human ambition: he 
says : 

" When the political machine is such that the grand objects 
of desire are seen to be the natural prize of great and virtuous 
conduct, of high services to mankind, and of the generous and 
amiable sentiments from which great endeavors in the service 



gS Of Government 

of mankind naturally proceed, it is natural to see diffused 
among mankind a generous ardor in the acquisition of all those 
admirable qualities which prepare a man for admirable actions; 
great intelligence, perfect self-command, an over-ruling benev- 
olence. When the political machine is such that the grand 
objects of desire are seen to be the reward not of virtue, not of 
talent, but of subservience to the will and command over the 
affections of the ruling few [or of the ruling many, I may add, 
for what matters whether many or few if they be unfit?] ; inter- 
est with the man above to be the only sure means to the next 
step in wealth, or power, or consideration, and soon, the means 
of pleasing the man above become, in that case, the great object 
of pursuit." 

Aristotle has the hke thought, applying it equally 
to the tyranny of the many and the tyranny of the 
few; for he says: 

"A demagogue with an unregulated democracy is like the 
flatterer among the others, and both these two classes abound 
with each, flatterers with tyrants and demagogues among such 
a people." 

From this reasoning I conclude that all procedure 
in government, as before said at length, should re- 
quire naught whatever but fitness. And therefore, 
that, having fit servants, we should keep them while 
their fitness wanes not, and especially while it grows 
by experience; and that for the getting of fit servants, 
we must have fit electors; and that of these the fitness 
ought not to be fixed, but move in an ascending scale 
as knowledge grows in the community, and that this 
fitness should be held disproved by illiteracy according 
to the standards of the time and place, and by any 
immorality which is injurious to citizenship. Espe- 
cially, how difiicult soever it be to apply these quali- 



Of Hand - Writing 99 

ficatlons in any degree, and impossible in perfection, 
yet he whose mind does not glow for them as for an 
ideal, or who derides them either wantonly or fanat- 
ically, is but a sorry friend of liberty. 



OF HAND-WRITING 

Shall I write slowly to be shapely? or swiftly to 
create the more matter? Perhaps the more slowly 
is better, even though the matter entice. There 
is much in a sign manual. Manus not only meant 
hand and hand-writing, among the Romans, but 
power, as that which often comes from use of the 
hand — in manu tua est^ it is in your hands. Now the 
value of the hand goes into the act or work of it; 
therefore, though matter be really more than manner, 
yet is the manner of some worth, and a neat page not 
to be despised. A wise woman said to a slovenly 
fellow: "Take heed of your looks, for no one will 
think you sell jewels if you hang out the sign of a 
junk-shop." 

There must be some reason in us why we do any- 
thing so and not otherwise; and this reason many, yea 
all, share with us in our time and place. Wherefore 
all act both alike and unlike, having a sphere of unity 
and again an area of difference. It is so with hand- 
writing. Examine specimens a hundred years old, 
and they all will have a likeness among themselves, and 
also a like unlikeness to the present style. For each 



1 oo Of Hand - Writing 

man writes a double hand, shared in part with all per- 
sons about him and in part all his own. 

What doubt that our moral condition or situation has 
a part in our motions ? Assuredly also in our hand- 
writing. I have heard that there is a criminal chirogra- 
phy, which keen observers have learned to know, who 
thereby may detect the correspondence of criminals in 
the mails. I know not how much this may be possi- 
ble, or how little. Yet our visible parts tell of our 
inward being; and what signs we know not now, by 
and by we shall learn. Emerson says: "Character 
teaches over our head ; if a man have not found his 
home in God, his manners, his form of speech, the 
turn of his sentences, the build — shall I say ? — of all 
his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave 
it out how he will." I know not if the hand be less 
morally sensitive than the whole body, which acts in 
behavior as Emerson says, or than the mouth, which 
fits the form of speech and the style of pronunciation; 
though it is wonderful that there should be certain 
kinds of marks or shapes, curves, angles, which any 
one must make who has thievery in his heart. Again, 
there will be vicious or cruel handwriting, and that, 
again, which marks a soiled imagination. There must 
be possible, as I have said, a science of this fact, and 
what is possible will become actual. Then it will be 
known, and by exact rules laid down, in what way 
two men, or a hundred men, will write alike if they 
are thieves, how otherwise differently soever. Nay, 
such manual disclosure will take account of the heart, 
and not of the act only. For the thievish heart thus will 



Of Hand- Writing tOl 

be compelled to write itself down, though temptation 
and time to rob be wanting. We shall say not only 
'■'■Literae sc?'iptae manenl^'' but In Uteris scripiis 
manct horiio. 

I have heard shoemakers say that each one inevita- 
bly can recognize his ow^n work, not by sewing or 
color or material, but by its peculiar minute individu- 
ality, like to a hand-writing. Also telegraphers, I 
have been told, learn readily the sound of their fellow's 
manner. If the soul can be kept out of anything, 
what would we think could catch less of it than the 
click of an electro-magnet? Yet operators know the 
peculiar tick of the styles of their associates in distant 
cities as readily as we descry the hand-writing of a 
friend. Surely, thus the soul casts a long shadow, 
while yet the day of knowledge is but little spent! 
Like to the action of the body, obedient to the state of 
the mind, so is the shape of the body, of hand or face 
or other parts. It is not so difficult to read these 
marks as to explore the intricate varieties of hand- 
writing; indeed, much progress has been made therein. 
But to know the meaning of every little curve, 
whether in the hand and other parts or in what the 
hand traces, we shall await millennial knowledge, 
when mind shall reach its highest observation and 
men's bosoms have their least to conceal. 

Some moral reflections occur on this matter. 
Science turns on us an eye which perhaps will enforce 
a better morality. It is not so easy to do ill when dis- 
covery is certain by witness of the involuntary turn of 
our wrist or fingers. This virtue, indeed, will not be 



io2 Of Hand- Writing 

a noble goodness j but how large a part of our seertl- 
ing grace is prudence or fear? Again, if the outward 
thus must conform to the inward, and what we are 
really in soul repeat itself in our motions, even in the 
trembling of our fingei's holding a pen, a beauty in the 
outward is then a signal or pennant of harmony within. 
Therefore it is a happiness to see how much beauty 
the human race already has attained, how pleasant 
with good faces and agreeable looks a social party is, 
how shapely are many heads, how fine the dome 
thereof, how excellent the eye! — for these are but the 
drapery of good chambers in the soul. 

Often I have observed that when persons look alike 
in features they move alike also, so that they will have 
the same poise of hand or gesture, because the soul 
that shapes the features shapes also the curves of the 
muscles of motion. Therefore if persons write alike, 
though little they look alike or otherwise move alike, 
the likeness of writing will not be without its reason; 
and if we know the character of one, we may conclude 
safely therefrom to the character of the other. It will 
not be easy to say in what traits they resemble each 
other, since it cannot be in all traits, unless the writing 
be precisely the same. Notwithstanding, this may 
serve sometimes as a useful caution, and one may 
argue safely a wide resemblance in joroportion to the 
likeness of the writing. 



OF KNOWLEDGE 

WoLLASTON thus sums up his volume, " The Re- 
ligion of Nature Delineated ": " For a conclusion of 
the whole matter, let our conversation in this vv^orld, 
so far as we are concerned and able, be such as ac- 
knowledges everything to be what it is." It is com- 
mon report that things look not always as they are. 
Knowledge of anything is to have it in the mind as it is 
in fact. This is so important that Wollaston, as above, 
has identified it even with religion; and rightly, if we 
allow the universe to be good and divine; for then 
Nature's order will appear excellent and worshipful 
when we see it as it is. 

Knowledge, among divers conditions, has these 
two — that what we know of anything will depend — 
first, on our size relatively to it, and, secondly, on our 
distance fi-om it. For if we are too far away, we 
shall not see it at all; and if too near, we shall be entan- 
gled in its pai'ts, not seeing it in unity; while if in 
mind or body we be not large enough to couple with 
the object, our best understanding will be but piece- 
meal knowledge, not seeing the whole as it is. For 
illustration or instance, take a mite whose feet tickle 
our finger; to the insect we must appear as to our body 
very differently from the manner in which we must 
see the creature. In like manner, we perceive a great 
mountain, which is unknown to the squirrel sporting 
on it, and more hid still from the cicada nibbling a 

(103) 



104 Of Knowledge 

leaf in the forest on it. A ball hurled from a gun 
across our vision and close to us, at a thousand miles 
an hour we cannot see; but we see the moon well, 
though its s^^eed is more than two thousand miles an 
hour. By reason of the distance, the moon seems even 
not to move at all; and if we were not large enough in 
mind to study the moon, how could we know its mo- 
tion, or how tliink of it except as done in leaps, since 
we could not observe the transition? If we were not 
much larger creatures in Nature's eye — which judges 
always according to power of thought — than a basin 
of water, we might be amazed to find it warm to one 
hand and cold to the other (as Berkeley has set forth), 
and led, perhaps, to fantastic dreams of two natures in 
one — as many as ever amused a mediaeval Aristotelian. 
These instances — and many more, easily multiplied — 
will show how distance and relative size affect knowl- 
edge, which I shall take as allowed. 

Now, as to knowledge of our own selves — herein 
relative size is done away, since the knower and the 
object are the same; but the requirement of due dis- 
tance remains, for by effort of thought we can step 
apart and look at ourselves afar off. Justice and wis- 
dom regarding ourselves wait on the distance we can 
go in mind from the small private circle of interests, 
emotions, prejudices, habits, which are implacable foes 
of understanding. Sidney Smith says: 

'♦ It is a great thing toward making right judgments, if a 
man know what allowance to make for himself, and what dis- 
count should habitually be given to his opinions, according as 
he is old or young, French or English, clergyman or layman, 
rich or poor, torpid or fiery, healthy or ill, sorrowful or gay." 



Of Knowledge 105 

But it is a rare gift to have the wish, rarer the 
power, to break from the tumults of experience and 
climb a far hill of judgment, from which coigne to 
see the valley of our passions. We have great power 
to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; 
but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and 
can a man deceive any one so easily as himself? 
Whoever will be informed as to himself (the most 
thrifty of all knowledge for happiness and power) 
must take post of sight far enough to dissolve the 
crafty biases which keep us stunted, meager, fractious. 
As to knowledge of our fellow-creatures — herein 
both conditions apply. We shall judge our fellows 
well according as we compare with them in size, that 
is, in stature of mind, and as we view them from a 
distance ; but the far view means freedom from preju- 
dice. As to all animals, higher and lower — our fel- 
low-beings — a man's soul is gauged by his sympathy. 
Whoso has only a kick for a dog is a shabby creature of 
his kind, a reversion to our far precursors which had 
hoofs, of whom the most famous, according to a 
strange popular fable, as if to curse the vulgarity of a 
kick, was the devil. The donkey in the fable — whose 
huge bulk had no fiber tuned to the nightingale's 
song — to the mind's eye, in respect of music, was no 
more than a mite compared to that little feather-breast 
on the tree-top. Whoever fails of loving what is be- 
low him will fail of worshiping what is above him. 
Relish of the sight of any excellence, — what purer 
satisfaction? What we think of as the supreme bless- 
edness of the Most High — was it ever better writ than 



lo6 Of Knowledge 

in the one sentence: "And God saw all that He had 
made, and behold, it was very good''''} 

Regarding our fellow-human beings, plainly the 
conditions apply. Whoso begins to traduce another 
or gossip glibly will halt awhile if he ask whether he 
be certainly large enough to understand the object of 
his dislike. For notably it is the best men of the world 
who have been most maligned. If a man take no 
measure of himself in judging others, and no account of 
jealousy or of many other passions, or of those strange 
personal attractions and aversions which none can es- 
cape, he will stumble into dark pits under pretense of 
seeking his neighbor therein. But after this precau- 
tion, then remains the second condition, the distant 
view-point, that is, the sifting out of pre-judgments. 
But here enters a caution — indifference of mind is not 
openness of mind; it is not sight from a far coigne of 
vantage; it is no sight. It is not philosophic poise, 
but malign prejudice and fatal incapacity. If a man 
enjoy only shadows and lights, will he be quick as to 
colors? Are untuncful ears unbiased as to music? 
Foolish to put a savage, on account of his indifference, 
to judge of Wagner, for untunableness as to all sounds 
is the worst prejudice as to Wagner's sounds. Nay, 
even if a man have a tunable ear and an eye for par- 
terres and rainbows, indifference to any master in 
those forms Is not a capacity for criticism. Give me 
the help of a warm lover of a person or an artist, so 
he be sensible and frank; for thus, though I may know 
less of faults, surely I shall sun myself In the stronger 
ray of virtues, which chiefly I wish to see. 



Of Meditation ioy 

As to knowledge of nature — herein both conditions 
apply; but relative size means nobility of soul. For 
if the glorious order of the earth and heavens express 
divinity, who can know it whose bodily fibers thrill 
only to appetite and whose mind digs in clay? The 
second condition — distance of view — means knowl- 
edge, that is, mental vision which takes sight of na- 
ture at long range and in unity. For as we can not 
get outside of nature nor find any point more central 
or better to see from than whcMe we are, so we can 
take a large sweej:) and gather a multitude into one 
thought only by the mind's eye. The many things 
marshal forth one meaning by the army of species, 
genera, orders, kingdoms, with rhythmical movement. 
But to the bare sense this is hidden, being the domain 
of mind. To ignorance, which can not arrive at this 
far look, this sweep of knowledge-vision, nature must 
seem to go on piecemeal — from which comes a mean 
and sordid life and an abased form of religion. 



OF MEDITATION 

By meditation I mean not merely thinking; for 
that may be a wrestling with problems of philoso- 
phy, or of physics, or of affairs. Still less I mean 
abstraction of mind; for one may be drowned in 
dreams, by day or by night. There is an intent revelry 
of the mind which yet no more is meditation than rid- 
dles are studies, or games labor. Meditation is a strong 
and quiet attention of the mind to high and noble 



io8 Of Meditation 

ideas. This definition states two qualities. Medita- 
tion is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is 
well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow 
sympathies and understand little that occurs around 
him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, " deep 
calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machin- 
ery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' 
voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the 
sea is to show the stars. Meditation, secondly, must 
be power of will and strength of attention, being like 
a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied 
hard though joyfully. 

William Law says: " Meditate on great things, and 
your soul will soon grow great and noble by so med- 
itating upon them." 'Tis worth a look by what 
ways meditation of greatness will create greatness in 
us. Yet who can number the ways? For what 
great exercise of mind or of heart is there, which has 
not ten thousand touches and minglings, and flows 
not to the sea of life by a delta of innumerable 
mouths? To follow two or three of these is good 
exercise; and to go with one to the sea will instruct 
more than to look at the host of them where they 
divide. 

One way of meditation to make us grow great and 
noble is that it brings us into great company. For as 
a sage wished " that virtue might assume a visible 
form," so the mind constantly clothes grandeur with 
shape, looking at it not as a spread of power in the 
sky, but as a soul and life in some person. Therefore 
to meditate on high and sacred things is to bring be- 



Of Meditation 109 

fore us often great spirits, whether historical from the 
past or known only to our own eye in the present, who 
are clothed with those virtues or whose lives are the 
garments of the greatest thoughts. Thus to meditate 
IS to look often into faces which appear before us 
with a fixed grandeur, their features set as if by a 
chisel or brush into a noble expression without 
change. Now, to keep great company is to grow in 
greatness. Lowell has said that the dignity of the 
elder masters of English writing sprang from the 
great books they consorted with, there being but few 
at hand, and those the loftiest: " they lunched with 
Plutarch and supped with Plato," and grew to the 
grand manner of that grand company. Can one go to 
the presence of a brave man full of simplicity and not be 
glorified? — as Michael Angelo said that when he read 
Homer, " he looked at himself to see if he were not 
twenty feet in height." And who ever lives long and 
often with such spirits, must not he come to see how 
great the greatness and what a reality the goodness 
which those souls so shine with? 

Meditation has another way of ennoblement, but 
parallel, namely, that it lifts the mind up above our- 
selves. Here returns (for indeed the thoughtful 
mind will find it rising everywhere) that wisdom of 
the Stoics which divided all things into two classes, 
" the things in our power and the things not in our 
power." Now by meditation we rise to " the things 
not in our power," but in whose power we are. 
Action and business are in those things which we rule 
and turn this way and that, as we will or as our 



no Of Meditation 

strength is; but meditation lifts to the things in whose 
hands we are as wax; to the principles wherein we see 

that 

" Whoso fights and whoso falls, 
Justice conquers evermore," 

and behold 

" aloft the red right arm 
Straight redress the eternal scales." 

Then we look on the awful certainty of the moral 
law, to see which confers both a glory and a standard 
on us; a glory, because we must come into agreement 
with it, and what glory is greater than obedience, 
since, as a German poet has said, " The law of God is 
thy law, otherwise it could not be thy law!'''' and a 
standard, because when we weigh our deeds medita- 
tion will offer a comparison, not with this one or that 
other one, or with a common level, as if we did well 
enough if as well as others, but with principles 
whose light we have risen into. 

Another power of meditation comes close beside 
these, namely, that by going often thus to the pres- 
ence of noble and great things we learn to know their 
look, so as to see them when they come to our 
presence. It holds firmly that unless we grow fa- 
miliar with the countenance of greatness by often 
looking at it, so as then to know it when it comes face to 
face with us in the world, we shall gather no grandeur 
at all ; because vv^e can not contrive greatness, but only 
recognize and take it as it goes by or as nature pours it 
out. If often we have meditated on heroism, and 
especially on its countenance in the common affairs of 



Of Meditation ill 

life, we shall know a hero when we see him. But 
otherwise, how know him? — nay, how avoid mistak- 
ing him for the fustian or the tinsel of his garments? 
For certainly, selfish villains as well as heroes have 
been thrown to the lions and died with daring. If 
vv^e have meditated what love is, and how we shall act 
if it be good and strong, then we shall know a heart 
of it when we see it, and shall revere it ; yes, we shall 
believe it a great genius and glorious faculty equal 
to high powers of music or of eloquence, so that a 
mother over her child, or friend whose love is like the 
horizon, or a prophet whose heart tears him for the 
oppressed, will seem as great as Homer for his epics. 
Now, to become acquainted with these sublime 
things so as to know them by the wayside, is to be 
made great as to these things; for, he who knows in- 
stantly the beautiful wherever it issue, has a nature 
that is ennobled in respect of beauty ; so, in respect of 
virtue, love, heroism, religion. If the eye be in- 
structed, then we know charms of color and of form; 
and their import comes to harbor in us, from where- 
soever hailing. If the ear be made fine by much 
listening, straightway the harmonies of sound and the 
beauties of rhythm are caught as they fly. Now the 
eye and ear that instantly can perceive beauties and 
salute them, have become great and noble organs. 
So is the soul great and noble when it knows 
immediately the things that belong to the soul, 
wheresoever they be. 

One other channel by which meditation pours 
greatness I will follow, namely, that it leads us to a 



112 Of Meditation 

knowledge of ourselves; I mean not of what we may 
have done with ourselves, but of what our true nature 
is. It is familiar that the Greeks laid great stress on 
this knowledge, and summed up all wisdom in the 
command, " Know thyself." How can anything 
seem to us sublime that is really so unless we know 
what is truly ourselves and is made to see sublimity 
and to rejoice in it.? Emerson says: " What the heart 
declares great is great." Yes, indeed, if the heart 
have knowledge of itself, that it is human and what it 
is to be human ; for then it will know the things to 
be sublime that truly are so. But if the heart have no 
knowledge of itself above what it shares with dumb 
creatures, it will think a bone or a crust to be great. 
William Law says : " When a right knowledge of our- 
selves enters into our mind, it makes as great a change 
in all our thoughts and apprehensions as when we 
awake from the wanderings of a dream. * * * My 
children, there are things in the world which pass for 
wisdom, politeness, grandeur, happiness and fine 
breeding, which show as great ignorance of ourselves, 
and might as justly pass for thorough madness, as 
when a man fancies himself to be glass or ice." Now 
we shall know what our nature is by meditation, often 
asking ourselves ' What am I ? What ought I to 
live for? What is the real and true good and the 
most valuable thing to such a creature as I am?' 
Nay, we should put a quotidian question, thus: 
What great or sublime thing have I thought of this 
day? Is it not reasonable to think a day wasted in 
which we can recall nothing grand and quiet filling 



Of Meditation 113 

us, but only noisy things? Plainly, if so we will 
question, it is in the power of meditation to make us 
in fact what by nature's intention we are. 

We mistake if we think meditation requires leisure, 
for there may be quiet without leisure. But must we 
not be faithful to the noisy cares? Yes, and that is to 
give them their place; but not more than their place. 
What that place is each one must meditate for himself. 
But the busiest and the hardest worked can find time 
and quiet. Truly, little time is needful in order to 
think much. For as but a swift glance is enough to 
catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little 
lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar 
beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sub- 
lime thoughts will give us their light and power. It 
seems to be not the vast things, but the immense mul- 
titude of little, like insects in a forest, which eat up 
the fruit of time. Aurelius says: " To-day I have got 
out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, 
for it was not outside but within, and in my 
opinions." But what? say we; are we to feel no sor- 
rows? Confound not sorrow, which is divine and 
high, with trouble, which is menial and frivolous. A 

poet says: 
*" " Sorrow none can feel 

But he who has his heart filled full with love, 
Beauty, truth, freedom and fidelity. 

Sorrow is next of kin to joy itself, 
Health, honor, freedom and the sense of right." 
Trouble is immersion in littlenesses. Aurelius says 
again : " Do the things external which fall on thee 



114 Of Common Sense 

distract thee ? Give thyself time to learn something 
new and good, and cease to be whirled around." 



OF COMMON SENSE 

I FIND three meanings of common sense, — that it is 
the sense of the multitude, the common level or reach 
of opinion; or that it is sound, equitable sense and 
strong understanding; or that it is the consensus or 
agreement of the persons who are greatest in the fac- 
ulty or affairs in question. 

As to the first meaning, I have found a writer of 
fifty years ago who makes " some uncommon remarks 
on common sense." He considers it to be opinions and 
feelings in unison with the greater portion of the race 
or society in which one's lot is cast. To say that one 
has common sense this author thinks is no great praise; 
or, in his own words, " it implies more praise than cen- 
sure to want" common sense; for to ascribe it to a 
man is simply to say " that he thinks with his age or 
country," accoixling to the habit or fashion of the hour; 
which fashion, how correct soever in some matters, in 
the whole domain of knowledge will be more error 
than truth. The writer instances; he says: 

"There are many things which were contrary to common 
sense in former ages, both in philosophy and religion, which 
are now universally believed, insomuch that to call them in 
question is to discover a want of judgment or a defective edu- 
cation." 
On the other hand : 

" It is agreeable to the common sense of a great part of 
mankind to revenge public or private injuries by wars and 



Of Commojt Sense I15 

duels; and yet no wise or just reason has ever been given to 
justify the practice of either of them. * * * We find the 
most acceptable men in practical society have been those who 
have never shocked their cotemporaries by opposing popular 
or common opinions. Men of opposite characters, like objects 
placed too near the eye, are seldom seen distinctly by the age 
in which they live. They must content themselves with the 
prospect of being useful to the distant and more enlightened 
generations which are to follow." 

These remarks give not the whole account of com- 
mon sense, and yet they have a justice. Their circle 
is too small, but correct in curve. Plainly, whatever 
men make common sense to be, their judgment and 
measure of it is the current opinion of their neighbor- 
hood, because they are disquieted with anything 
contrary to the settled condition of things; and the 
prejudice or habit that gathers about this established 
state is in truth their common sense. 

No o-reat teacher ever lived and set himself to show 
others how to live who was not proscribed for lack of 
common sense; that, too, by reason of deeds or views 
which afterward were thought his greatest glories. 
Therefore Emerson says: " It is the uncivil man that 
makes the world move;" for he is uncivil who stands 
against ntoi-es civiles^ and will not breathe the " one 
vogue, one vein, one air of thoughts," which is the 
wo*nt. Nevertheless, whoso pays no heed whatever 
to plain paths long beaten will not walk wisely. An- 
cient agreement and long concurrence of many men 
have a right of authority in reason. To rise above 
this is grand action; but not to weigh it, is shallow 
thinking. Wisdom as to the common sense, there- 



ii6 Of Coimnon Sense 

fore, is like the virtue of poetry, " to be bold, but 
not too bold;" for imagination and reason must use 
their wings, but not to fly away. 

The second meaning of common sense is a domi- 
nant, practical understanding. Emerson, with this 
view of it, states one universal fact therein. He says: 

" The perception of matter is made the common sense, and 
for cause. This was the cradle, this tlie go-cart of tlie liuman 
child. * * * The restraining grace of common sense is 
the mark of all the valid minds — of .^sop, Aristotle, Alfred, 
Luther, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The 
common sense which does not meddle with the absolute, but 
takes things at their word — things as they appear — believes in 
the existence of matter, not because we can touch it or con- 
ceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves and the uni- 
verse does not jest with us but is in earnest — is the house of 
health and life." 

Hence observation is a form of the highest common 
sense, and goes with it; for strong vmderstanding ever 
keeps very close to facts, and leaves not the lead of 
one except under pilotage of another and to seek for 
more, that it may put many facts together till their 
relation one to another makes a circumference of 
knowledge. This is the principle of scientific dis- 
covery, as well as of all wide business, and of gov- 
ernment. Wherefore, men busied in studying matter 
or affairs have been thought to have great common 
sense. 

The greatness of common sense, and its title to rev- 
erence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complex- 
ity, that is, with the innumerable elements of a situa- 
tion. Common sense discerns and judges a path 



Of Common Sense 117" 

through this knotted and tangled maze. This is truly 
a great mental power, a round, complete, powerful 
genius. What question in philosophy, what intricacy 
of mathematics, which is not like a simple line or in- 
dexed path compared to questions of action in im- 
measurable crises, where neither the elements can be 
counted or marshaled, nor the spread of their influ- 
ence spanned ? Therefore, common sense is a wis- 
dom that never hurries. It can wait, having the 
strength to let decision and judgment hang. Is there 
a strength greater than this, or rarer? He is a strong 
man who can press without interfering, and attend in 
silence while events work; for such a patience calls 
everything to its service. Hence it is the virtue of 
common sense to know when the moment comes by 
a kind of divination, and to act with decision where it 
can not reason or argue the way, but after the patience 
of waiting knows the moment of enterprise. But all 
this efilcacy rests on observation ; for to wait with the 
eyes shut is not waiting but slumbering. How shall 
one reason or divine what he should lead affairs to, 
who has not beheld or gathered them as they are by 
attention of eye and ear? 

A trait of common sense is not to expect from one 
thing what belongs to another. This is a very common 
error. How many men who are selfish for interest, or 
ignorant from ease, or poor from idleness, or cruel for 
revenge, or inhospitable from shallow sympathies, 
groan nevertheless if they be not treated like the gen- 
erous, the learned, the rich, the loving, the conversible ? 
Multitudes, truly. The world roars like the sea with 



Ii8 Of Common Sense 

the cries of men who, having paid for something, moan 
or scream for the opposite thereof. From this it appears 
that shrewdness is not common sense, though often 
confused with it. For shrewdness pertains to small 
affairs, or to a small way with large ones ; and he who 
handles little things with cunning, commonly hopes 
to make more of them than the material has in it. 
Common sense is so just an understanding that it 
rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues 
and their participation in judgment. For sound sense 
implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as 
to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne. 
Imagination, sympathy, love, honesty, mix in it, as 
well as intelligence and knowledge. If this be ob- 
served well, it will reverse many judgments as to 
greatness, and create new thoughts about genius. If, 
to give instance, common sense be wide as well as 
penetrating faculty, and embrace a knowledge of 
moral forces and of love. Napoleon, how glaring 
soever the light which he flashed, like an insane eye, 
must be held in common sense to be as stupid as a 
baker who should put unwet flour into his oven, or a 
chemist, who, from one ingredient, should expect the 
properties of two or three compounded. 

How good it is that we speak of well-balanced un- 
derstanding as common sense. On the whole, how 
common and excellent intelligence is! Whoever will 
but give his fellows a chance, being willing to set 
himself in shadow sometimes that he may see others 
in the light, and will observe them a little closely and 
without envy, I may defy him not to be surprised 



Of Common Sense 119 

daily with the good talents and the fine performance 
which he will discover. To have common sense is 
to have the common heart, common imagination, 
hope, faith; and this is grandeur. For the common 
heart has done vast tragedies of love; the common 
imagination has wrought folk-lore and myths of all 
colors more gracious than jDoets' dreams — nay, the 
pigments of poets' pictures; the common hope has 
divined everlastingness, and faith has dreamed per- 
fection and wrought religion in the image thereof. 
What can there be very great that is not common ? 
For it is common to feel — in which all greatness lies. 
Expression only is exceptional, and is but the garment 
of greatness. What other reason why poets are 
treasured? Their power is that of Antony with the 
people: "I tell you that which you yourselves do 
know." For if poets uttered things unfelt by others, 
as well they might verse in Zend, or " babble in 
tongues," as Paul would say, for none would under- 
stand them. 

I may call this great and strong common sense a 
sense of the common, I mean of the beauty of common 
things. This is the source of poetical discovery, as ob- 
servation of properties is of the scientific. I have read 
that Goethe would pause in his walks to gaze with rap- 
ture in at the open door of a cobbler's stall, wherein the 
man at his work and all the emblems about him were 
like a ravishing picture to the poet's eye. I know not 
whether Browning speaks with a reminiscence of the 
famous German, or whether it be a simple likeness of 
mind, but thus he writes, describing a poet: 



I20 Of Common Sense 

" He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, 
The man who slices lemons into drink, 
The coffee-roaster's brazier and the bojs 
That volunteer to help him turn its winch. 
He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, 
And fly-leaf ballads on the vender's string. 
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. 
He took such cognizance of men and things, 
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; 
If any cursed a woman, he took note." 

The like may one see in this poet's " Christmas Eve," 
wherein the drench, the steam, the vulgarity, " rhe 
patchwork of chapters and texts in severance," " the 
crazy hinge," the " wry and flapping umbrella," the 
" broken clogs " of the " many tattered little old- 
faced peeking sister-turned-mother," the "sickly 
babe," the " draggled shawls," " the dingy satins of a 
female something," the " shoemaker's lad with wiz- 
ened face in want of soap," crowded in a little con- 
venticle, are combined like colors in a picture full of 
pathos. Poetry is the highest of all wisdom; tor it 
seems the one art and one scholarship which gives its 
due to every side of life at once. It is a poem''s es- 
sence that it wraps all things in unity to our thinking 
as they are in their acting, but from which they slip 
into manifoldness to our seeing. 

The third meaning of common sense, I have said, 
is the agreement or consensus of the greatest persons. 
As all can not be equally great in all things, always 
it will behoove a multitude to revere the agreement of 
one group eminent in one matter, and of another group 
who are great persons in some other faculty. Each 



Of Common Sense 121 

great company has its common sense or unity in its 
kind. Here open humility and reverence as elements 
of general common sense. And great elements; for 
whoever can not combine w^ith his own reason a rev- 
erent following of the greatest persons in whatever he 
studies, will go but little way because his own strength 
is too small, or else will go but very slowly because he 
must discover anew what others before him painfully 
have explored. As Emerson said (before quoted), 
" The restraining grace of common sense is the mark 
of all the valid minds, of y^sop, Aristotle," and the 
rest, so I will add there is a consensus as great as this 
one glorifying all holy seers and prophets. What the 
solidity of matter is to Aristotle, Franklin, Napoleon, 
that the higher law is to Confucius, Paul, Socrates, 
Huss. The life in plants, animals and human society 
is to ^sop, Shakspeare, Cervantes, no more common 
soil than the spiritual life to Buddha, Isaiah, John, 
Jesus. All these teachers, and whatever others may 
be mentioned worthily with them, show a common 
sense of the perfect, eternal and unseen in morals 
and in being. 

To gather all — there is a common sense which is 
the level of the multitude or of the time. This is to 
be studied thoughtfully. There is a common sense 
which is a wide and noble harmony of powers. This 
is to be sought by discipline. There is a common 
sense or agreement of the highest and greatest per- 
sons. This is to be revered religiously. 



OF REQUITAL 

Is any other thing so black as ingratitude? It 
seems the worst defilement of the most defiled things. 
If a man rob another it is held a dark deed ; but, if he 
rob his benefactor does not every one think the in- 
gratitude more base than the thieving? But the 
vileness of ingratitude is simply the baseness of re- 
ceiving something w^ithout paying; and in proportion 
to the greatness of the gift will be the ignominy of 
so receiving it. Hence, not to pay for the great 
benefit of kind interest, help, friendship, affection, 
with a like requital of faithful observance deservedly 
is held degraded. The principle of all life should be 
to give at least as much as we take. This is very 
plainly an unalterable rule in nature. It is the law of 
matter and of force — as in mechanics the coal which 
is burned never fails of exactly the same return of 
work. 

Who can be sure what is the greatest evil in the 
world ? But perhaps there is no vice meaner or more 
prevailing than the striving to get something for 
nothing. This is a pestilence with which the whole 
world seems sick ; the severe contriving of vast hosts 
of people is wholly how to get something for nothing. 
For, observe that it is the same thing whether we get 
anything for less than its value or for nothing; for if 
anything be fairly valued at four, and we get it for 
two, then we pay for but half of it, and the other 

(122) 



Of Requital 123 

half we seize for nothing. La Rochefoucauld, who 
observed shrewdly, says: " The love of justice in 
most men is only the fear of suffeinng by injustice;" 
which is to say that the rage to take without requital, 
and obtain something without sacrijficing anything, is 
so great that men falter at it only from knowing that 
unless they do it with such discretion as conceals it, 
assuredly every one will do the same, and then all but 
the few strongest will be robbed. It is well to have 
a happy faith that there are better grounds for justice 
than this; and there are good reasons for that faith; 
yet the sickness of taking without giving, or at least 
the " itching palm " for it, is a wide sickness. 

The law of requital is that kind of justice which 
dips deeply into self-respect. It is manliness to wish 
always to pay the worth of what we have. This is a 
fit pride, a right republican loyalty, a good loftiness. 
Besides, this is the basis of honorable enjoyment, for 
no one can enjoy another's work or possessions as 
much as his own, and surely true ownership waits on 
payment. There is something odious and contempt- 
ible in enjoyment of whatever we have not made our 
own in the earning of it by some true requital. The 
thievishness of pleasure in what we earn not is plain 
enough when we think of reputation, fame, honor got 
without merit. By common consent the ermine of 
glory must be earned. But few seem so to feel about 
possessions, privileges, powers; however, the law is the 
same. Many persons, again, who would scorn obliga- 
tions to individuals and could not sleep if they owed a 
man anything, nevertheless will rest insensible under 



124 ^-f ^^2^^^^^ 

obligations to the world without ever thinking of re- 
paying them. However, the debt is as real, and the 
meanness of not requiting it as great. We should be 
striking continually a balance with the world, thus: 
We have had so much and so much, this protection 
of law, that benefit from the State, this use of col- 
lected books, that delight from gathered pictures, 
these ravishments of great strains of music possible 
only where many together come to play, to sing, and 
to hear. So much for the one side. What on the 
other? What our contribution? Have we made re- 
turn for these things taken, or are we servile 
beneficiaries content to take without requiting? 

This fine justice holds also with the affections, and 
indeed secures bliss in the home, where that private 
and secret source of the greatest happiness — love — 
hides. Besides, if we neglect requital close at hand in 
the home and to our nearest, what encouragement 
that we shall do this dignity and justice anywhere? 
Here, then, cast up and strike the balance. Say to 
ourselves. We get so much or so much of service, 
comfort, happiness, care; return we a like amount, or 
is our requital short and beggarly? Here noblesse 
oblige to weigh well the finer treasures beyond price. 
If a wife have much skill in household crafts, what 
masters in the market would pay what she has daily 
from a husband — the comforts, the privilege, the lei- 
sure, the liberty and power. And if a man be a great 
master in art, or a vast genius in affairs, no riches can 
buy him what he reaps from the painstaking of the wife 
who is his house-friend; for interest, tenderness, devo- 



Of Anger 125 

tion, thought and love are things never for sale. 
What manner of person will be so sorry a catch- 
penny as to receive these with no requital? Are 
there skeptics about married happiness? Let them 
inquire first whether there be requital in the daily 
partnership. For why indeed should there be happi- 
ness if one comrade be but a trading boor, grossly 
content to receive great things for little? If every 
one in married life, from an inward dignity, even if 
there were little love, would say : I must see to it 
that I get not something for nothing — not even the 
least immunity, privilege, joy, for nothing — peace, 
prosperity and power would stream through the 
house. But the shame of taking something for 
nothing leads life downward at last, like mirth 
falling suddenly to a tragedy. If we cast not up with 
the world and with our comrades to give as much as 
we get, it is certain death will do it some day, and 
leave the balance heavy. We or our friend will die. 
The opportunity is fled, the lights are gone out, the 
book is closed, the door is shut; remains only the 
ghost of a sad face, the stare of a debt. 



OF ANGER 



Anger is more common than any passion but love; 
perhaps oftener perfect in its kind than any but fear. 
It will be well to observe it among its mates, the 
other passions, to see wherein it is like and unlike; 
and after that to treat of the different kinds of anger. 



126 Of Anger 

Like all passions, anger has degrees, ascending from 
slight vexation through deepening clouds to rage, and 
finally to fury, which is a black and horrible tempest. 
In its mid-region, where it is neither too little to be 
motive nor too furious to be ungovernable, it has its 
usefulness. For all feeling is as fuel, and where there 
is none life has no fire, and then no flame of ascent, 
no glow and no light. Wherefore anger urges as a 
motive, in this being like all passions. But it agrees 
with only some, and notably with fear, in that it is a 
waste of force and speedily flags. Anger uses up a 
vast force quickly, like a flash of explosion, and then 
has none left to apply to labor. Herein it is like a 
stimulant, which sets either effort or pleasure briskly 
forward, but soon slips back by a bitter and gloomy 
reaction. Mandeville says of liquors: 

"Their operation imitates that of anger. * * * It is for 
this reason that most people, when they are in drinlc, are sooner 
touched and more prone to anger than at other times, and 
some raving mad without any provocation at all." 

I have read in medical lore of a man, close to death, 
who, being provoked in some manner, suddenly 
roused to strength with the flame of his anger, and 
then when the fit of temper passed, sank as suddenly, 
and straightway died. In wastefulness anger agrees 
with all sudden emotions; for these are spent soon, 
and very wasteful if painful. And is anything more 
tormenting than bitter anger? The word has the 
sense of torture in it by derivation, if it come from the 
Latin angere^ which means to throttle and strangle, 
and thence to cause great anguish^ which indeed, is 



Of Anger 127 

the same word. To this pain Shaftesbury ascribes the 
desire of revenge, saying : 

" No wonder, indeed, that so much is done in mere revenge 
and under the weight of a deep resentment, when the relief 
and satisfaction found in that indulgence is no other than the 
assuagingof the most torturous pain and the alleviating of the 
most weighty and pressing sensation of misery. * * * 
Certainly if among lovers and in the language of gallantry, 
the success of ardent love is called the assuaging of a pain, this 
other success may be far more justly termed so. However 
soft or flattering the former pain may be esteemed, this latter 
surely can be no pleasing one; nor can it be possibly esteemed 
any other than sound and thorough wretchedness, a grating 
and disgustful feeling without the least mixture of anything 
soft, gentle or agreeable. * * * To be subject to such a 
passion is in reality to be very unhappy, and the habit of it is 
a disease of the worst sort, from which misery is inseparable." 

This misery is apparent in distorted features. The 
passions make outward signs for tliemselves; and 
especially they work in the face. All suffering con- 
torts the countenance so wofully that the pain flies to 
the beholder likewise. Now if the worst pain makes 
the most repulsive countenance, then there is no mis- 
ery like great anger; for it distorts the face more 
frightfully than any other torment. Therefore Sen- 
eca reasoned, " What must the soul of the angry man 
be when his face is so hideous?" which ugliness Jere- 
my Taylor draws in detail, saying of anger: 

" If it proceeds from a great cause it turns to fury, if from 
a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terri- 
ble or ridiculous. It makes a man's body monstrous, deformed 
and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale 
or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech clamorous and loud." 



a>taLr-a^t.»r^-^-^:.-*..:T.-..v-.^ -■--.- -f--^i./l^,»^-...,..v»-, ^..■.. .'■^.■:-.,.,.^::,^..,^^ 



128 Of Anger 

But as, if the lion be loosened on us he is only fright- 
ful, but if chained, majestic and beautiful, so this storm 
of anger confined has a splendor. It is a study in 
sublimity. The impending doom (the majesty of the 
lion of the will), the erect carriage, the tumultuous 
blood like a tide rocked by an earthquake over coast 
of brow and cheek, and then surging back, leaving 
paleness stranded, the tense muscles, the iron body — 
this is magnificence! Then comes beauty, when the 
storm is fled to the heavens — the softening of the 
body, new suppleness of the limbs, resumed ease and 
grace, the brow smoothing, the eyes sheathing their 
menace, soft moisture breaking on hands and mouth, 
and victory hanging out a pennant of healthy color in 
the cheeks! This is the royal purj^jle of a king. By 
reason of outward beauty alone, if no more, Emerson 
says justly that " self-command is the main elegance," 
and Lowell calls Washington's self-control " the per- 
petual full dress of his well-bred mind." 

The report of the wretchedness of anger in the 
hideousness of the raging face hints how we may help 
control the passion; for the face is like a door by 
which it gets at large ; now, if we compose the features 
resolutely, and will not look ugly, we close the door 
and confine the gusts, which soon settle. This has 
been remarked by the naturalists, Darwin saying in 
treating of the expression of emotions in men and 
animals, that when we resist the muscular movements 
which are the natural expression of a feeling, we go 
far to quench the feeling. 



Of Anger 129 

Anger is a weak passion; for what other will not 
conquer it if there be a conflict ? As in medicine it is 
confirmed that two inflammations can not be in the 
body together, but one will draw to itself the fire of 
the other and extinguish it, so in the mind very often 
one passion puts out another, the stronger feeding on 
the flame of the weaker. Anger is quenched by love, 
fear, shame, ambition, nay, even by vanity, nay, even 
by self interest, which is no passion, but a calculation 
smothering the fire; therefore, whoso is worsted by 
anger is driven by a weak mastei'. It is a trait of 
the weakness that not only anger rises for different 
causes with different persons (for so all other passions 
do), but for different causes on varying occasions with 
the same persons; also it is more liable for no cause at 
some times than at others. In this it differs from all 
other passions, and therein bares its weakness, as I 
have said. For who is the more or less given to love, 
to fear, to shame or ambition, by being hungry, thirsty, 
weary, perplexed, or too warm or too cold ? Yet all 
these things will lay open the frailty of thecholeric, 
and let out angry gusts. 

Of all passions, anger is most under the rule of the 
will. What man but could govern his wrath if a 
fortune hung on it, how choleric soever he were? 
But not so with fear, love, ambition, hatred, and other 
passions which often tear their way against all will, 
or are locked only with great struggle. Whether 
anger be more under the will because it is weaker 
than other passions, I know not ; but he is the 
strong man, not only over himself but over others, 



130 Of Anger 

and over circumstances, to command, to do, whose 
anger is a Caliban, whose will a Prospero. Because 
anger is the servant of will and cowers behind if the 
will be urged with motive, it is a liberty which a 
man allows himself; a gross liberty, for men take it 
with their inferiors, which is ungenerous, or with 
their lovers, which is cruel. 

In relation to time, anger is like fear, and unlike the 
other passions; it abides not like love, hatred, ambi- 
tion, or even envy or shame, but is a brief exercise, 
which looks very different after a little. Plutarch 
observed that cruelty often lies at the door of hurry. 
" Which of us all," he says, " is so cruel as to torment 
or scourge a servant because five or ten days before 
he burned the meat, overturned the table or did not 
soon enough what he was bidden ? And yet it is for 
just such things as these, while they are fresh and 
newly done, that we are so disordered and become 
cruel and imjilacable." As anger is a passing storm, 
so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a 
sudden sweep of wind or black squall. It is an in- 
stant leap of blood, as if the heart, with a vicious 
bound, surcharged the body. Sometimes it is with- 
held for a time, and then bursting restraint, flashes 
over every nerve, which tingles and burns with it. 
Thus, though so weak a passion, often it overcomes 
by suddenness, like the spring of a reptile, which, if 
it miss the mark, has done its all, and slinks into the 
grass. 

Like other passions, anger shows itself diversely in 
different persons; in some noisily, and in others qui- 



Of Anger 131 

etly but the more intensely and hence the more dan- 
gerously, especially as then it leaves the mind clear to 
act and to purpose ; for noise is not only distracting, 
but is itself a clamorous part of the act, and is harm- 
less. And into action anger leaps or flows, according 
to the nature of the person; in some at once, with a 
blow ; in others slyly, with precaution and with ef- 
fort to take unawares, and these are the more to be 
feared. 

So far of anger among the passions. Now as to 
kinds of anger. It is a weighty saying of Seneca, 
" If there were reason for beginning to be angry, 
there would be none for ever ceasing to be ;" and in 
another place, " It is madness to think that we can fix 
an end to passions which we can not control at their 
beginning." Reasons for the unreasonableness of an- 
ger he puts thus: " He who knows that men are not 
born wise, but have to become so, will never be angry 
with the erring," and again, " Has a good man injured 
you? Believe not so. A bad one? Wonder not at 
it." Anger at the bad is foolish, because then we are 
taken by surprise in that which we ought to have ex- 
pected from them; and at the good it is needless or 
impossible; so that in all cases it is unreasonable. To 
this stoic wisdom I defer as to most kinds of anger; 
but I count four kinds thereof, and one is not without 
excellence; nay, indeed, has some glory — the anger 
which towers against injustice for the sake of others. 
There is an ear of wrath to which the cry of the op- 
pressed cleaves, and this ear has fine knowledge of 
harmony. Such anger answers not to Bacon's say- 



132 Of Anger 

ing, that " anger is certainly a kind of baseness as it 
appears well in the weakness of those subjects in 
whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick 
folks." For this that I speak of is better named moral 
wrath, as John Weiss called the impetuous torrent of 
Parker's indignation, and it is no wail of sickness or 
age, but the sea-roar of health and youth, when a gale 
of love jdIows it. This anger is a shield as well as a 
motive; for though it be a pain, it fends the greater 
pain of fellow-suffering which would pierce the heart 
unresisted if behind the target of wrath the mind 
were not couching a lance to slay the evil. Who — 
so writes a poet 

" Mourns not, nor quails, but burns with holy wrath, 
Wrath only — that man feels not grief nor death. 

And so we find in all the great, in all 

Heroes and prophets, all who ever have 

Wrought great things, wrath, the bearer of all woe." 

The second kind of anger is that which is just but 
inglorious; for while it rises against a wrong, the 
wrong is done to ourselves. This anger shows its 
quality by flaming against a person; but the moral 
wrath of prophet and hero is against the wrong, and 
merciful to the sinner, according to Seneca's reason- 
ing. Bacon says again: "Men must beware that 
they carry their anger rather with scorn than with 
fear, so that they may seem rather to be above the in- 
jury than below it." But better than to be above the 
injury is to be unconscious of it; and this we may 
be if so we are set in contemplation of high things, 
and also of others' good affairs or qualities, that we 



Of Anger 133 

think of ourselves seldom and little. " I am I, and 
you are you," said the Chinese sage, meaning not I 
am above injury, but simply there is no harm unless I 
take it; and to a like purpose Aurelius, " No man is 
able to make your ruling faculty w^orse than it was 
before." 

The third kind of anger is the trivial sort, that 
flames at some trifling annoyance, little hurt, slight 
impediment; also at inanimate things, often falling 
into an insensate violence to them. 

The fourth kind of anger is the vulgar sort, puffy 
and vain, w^hich has no object at all in truth, but 
shoots against fancied affronts, invents slights and im- 
putes evil w^here none is meant. This anger of persons 
v^^ho are on the lookout for contempts, is like to be a 
perpetual ire wherewith these people never cease 
burning; for one can invent as many slights as he 
will. Such persons are either underlings, conscious 
of unworthiness and thus suspicious, or they are con- 
ceited and overweening, or they are envious. 

To conclude, as anger is a passion, it is to be ruled ; 
as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not ; but 
as it has a place in nature, he is weaker who feels it 
not. For a knight must go armed, and carry anger 
" like a still sword that tarries in its sheath," yet is 
not rusted therein, nor like a handle falsely fixed on a 
scabbard, — w^hich a man resembles if he look strong 
but can not be moved. Again, there is anger which 
is ignoble in kind, and all kinds are detestable in 
furious degrees; but also there is anger which has no 
tincture of shame, so it be subject and not sovereign. 



OF JUDGMENT OF OTHERS 

If judgment of others has been condemned by the 
penetrating intelligence and tender charity of the 
Nazarene, who said, "Judge not that ye be not 
judged," it is likely that the act runs some peculiar 
danger which we shall do well to consider'. Some of 
the snares and pitfalls are not hard to see. Very fine- 
looking actions may have very base motives, or 
conversely, noble intentions may lead to deeds but ill- 
appearing at first; as Seneca says," Often it is our duty 
to be just, and be imputed infamous." But if we are 
not careful we shall judge by what we see while the 
real quality of the act lies in the hidden part. Some- 
times appai-ent virtues are only ill-points in disguise, 
as when the weakness of obstinacy or opinionateness 
appears to be constancy, or when the boldness of 
terror or of despair seems courage. Conspicuous 
position, again, has much effect, for many men appear 
neither good nor bad only because they never come 
into a strong light and are as if hai'dly seen at all. 
So that whoever does not search deeply into the 
origin of deeds, or dissect carefully the elements of 
seeming excellence, or estimate the prominence and 
strong light in which any one appears, will not escape 
being judged by his judging. But the greatest dan- 
ger of all is forgetting the peculiar exposures of other 
persons, or overlooking to inquire about them. Job 
says of the poor of the land who are forced to hide 
(134) 



Of yudgment of Others 135 

themselves, that " they are drenched with the moun- 
tain showers, and embrace the rocks for shelter." 
Now, there are as great differences between the 
shelters that cover character as between the dwellings 
that lodge our bodies; and many there are who are 
morally unsheltered and hide only under a rock for 
want of covering. It is said we incline most to be 
severe to faults in others which most easily we keep 
clear of ourselves; yet this is not always keenness or 
hypocrisy ; to display, as some say, our own virtues, 

or to 

" Compound for sins we are inclined to, 
By damning those we have no mind to ;" 

but this severity comes to pass because we can not 
conceive or weigh duly the temptations and circum- 
stances from whose force happily we are free. 
Therefore the evil seems in others what it would be 
in ourselves — abominable and without excuse. But 
if we reflect that we have been never shelterless in 
point of that evil, shall we be disposed to judge 
another who never has been covered from it? I have 
met a saying of George MacDonald, which has the 
truth of kindness and the kindness of truth : 

" He who would soonest die to divide evil and his fellows, 
will be the readiest to make for them all honest excuse." 

A like morality is in Emerson's lines — 

" Of all wit's uses, the main one 
Is to live well with who has none." 

But wit in this couplet has wide scope, comprising 

mind, heart, conscience, which combine in knowledge. 

We shall be able to have charity, cautious judgment 



136 Of Judg77ient of Others 

and just consideration, only if we have power of feeling 
and much knowledge of life, and abihty to imagine 
conditions and their force not our own. This knowl- 
edge comes from greater experience than any one life 
packs in itself, and therewith love, — both needed 
in this wisdom of judgment; for all the things that 
press, push, strain and crush humanity, the inherited 
tendencies, the keenness of temptation, the suffering 
of loved ones, repressed longings blazing out in sight 
of possible, yet forbidden, satisfaction, long years of 
ignorance both of life and of ourselves, and of slumber 
suddenly wakened by a flash of bewildering light too 
dazzling to see in, dreadful disappointments, wrongs, 
oppressions — these, and such other like things, will 
not be judged justly unless we have the knowledge 
to go all around them as with a surveyor's chain, and 
the love pitifully to feel, while we are sheltered, the 
force of those blasts from life's poles on the unshel- 
tered and exposed. 

Finally, he who passes much censure and has a 
greedy eye for faults, will suffer more harm than he 
inflicts; for, at last, he will draw together all the evils 
that he keeps in sight and make himself a sink for 
them. Sir Thomas Browne has given a good rule 
and caution for judgment: 

" Since goodness and exemplariness are not in all, if others 
have not our virtues, let us not be viranting in theirs, nor scorn- 
ing them for their vices wherein we are free, be condemned by 
their virtues wherein we are deficient." 



OF PATIENCE 

Lewes has an excellent expression, "passionate 
patience," speaking* of the patient investigation of 
scholars and of scientific men. Is aught more worthy 
to be called a passion than the ardor of the scholar 
for learning, the philosopher for thinking, the chem- 
ist for research, the mechanic for invention? For 
surely one of three things marks passion — that either 
it is strong feeling, or else great steadfastness, or else 
keen pursuit — of which very often two, sometimes all, 
are mingled in one passion. Now, who blend these 
more than the scholar and thinker, by ardor of 
interest, by inquiring pursuit, and by constant devo- 
tion ? Wherefore, well they are said to have a passion 
of patience; in a like sense wherewith and finely 
Lowell calls the calm poise of Washington "his 
energetic passion of repose." 

Patience touches the quick of happiness, because if 
we endure not well we shall be wretched, and if we 
fail often (as who not, in greatest things ?) and still push 
not on, however compelled to go slowly, we shall 
come to nothing. I will speak first of the nature 
of patience; secondly, of its objects. 

As to the nature of it, it will be well to say first 
what it is not, and then what it is; for some things 
wear a mask like it which many mistake for it; and 
often the real quality, by its very quietness, is let pass 
unknown. Some persons are peaceful because they 
(137) 



1 38 Of Patience 

are selfish; so they are laden lightly enougn, others 
under burdens may go on as they can. They put on, 
as I may say, the cast-off clothing of philosophy, 
maxims of non-intervention, and lounge on the deck 
in apparent calm of reason; but aloft they spread 
stealthy sails to the breezes of advantage. But this 
tranquillity is not patience, nor aught indeed but bare 
selfishness. Others have a bitter endurance when any 
ill can not be escaped, a sullen and implacable suffer- 
ing, or even a sort of savage or ferocious acqui- 
escence; but others, in the opposite way, shed 
troubles and injuries as the body of a water-fowl keeps 
dry under feathers which the rain pelts or the waves 
bury; but neither the sullen suffering of the one, nor 
the ease of the other, is patience. Phlegmatic tem- 
perament is not patience. Love calls for much 
patience, because it can enjoy or suffer much. Now, 
unlovingness may be mistaken for it, but grossly ; for 
inaptitude to feel is not strength to endure. These, 
and other things in many denominations, are very far 
from patience. 

Now, to say what patience is: It is judgment 
which has grown to a faith, and the twain grown to 
a great forbearance, and these enforced with moral 
earnestness to help or reclaim. In this account, 
patience appears both composite and mighty; for what 
greatest power of the mind is there that takes not 
part in it, since it is made of thought and of feeling, 
of principle and of force? But if we look closely we 
shall see that it has this high place without doubt ; for, 
first it rests on the rational view of the facts of life 



Of Patience 139 

whence arises an energetic forbearance of temper for 
cause. For if not for cause, that is, rationally justified, 
restraint would be simply painful, and needless pain is 
folly. Thus, patience is first judgment of facts, from 
which it takes flight, like the PhcEnix from ashes, to 
an assertion of faith; for if there be no fair faith in 
future betterment, why bear with evil and evil-doers? 
It would be rational then to push out of sight the of- 
fensive and the offender. But patience knows of no 
creature wasted or his opportunity foreclosed. Now 
having this judgment, which taking wings for a 
great flight we call faith, moral earnestness is added; 
without which, what were the others but intelligent 
good nature ? but with which they are life and pur- 
pose to reform and bless. To these qualities self- 
control like a groom sets collar and trace; otherwise 
nothing is connected and no work done. Self-control 
will harness passion, with a star in his forehead, to the 
chariot which moral earnestness drives and faith 
guides. Now, to contract to a sentence, this is the 
account of patience, that it is judgment, and the judg- 
ment an assertion of faith in the divine order which 
casts nothing to waste, and the faith quickened by 
moral earnestness and the earnestness held by self- 
control. Here, then, it stands as a principle of devotion 
and a strength of forbearance. 

Now, as to the objects of patience, these are three- 
fold. First, plainly, we have to be patient with 
others. Now, this means not to despair of any one. 
Will not hope grow from simple observation, if we 
attend to it with a kindly eye? For it is verily my 



140 Of Patience 

experience that some indeed are worse but most better 
than they seem. Wherefore, if I can not teach or re- 
strain some one, perhaps another can; for as all 
elements will not work together in material sub- 
stances, so neither in spiritual, so that if I can not 
improve some one it may be my lack of fitness toward 
him, and not his inaptitude to improve. Aurelius has 
condensed this precept well : " If thou art able, 
teach others what is right, but if not able, remember 
to be meek on that account." It is a practical point 
in patience to use the morning well as a point of good 
setting out for the day. There should be a pause to 
think of this virtue and resolve for it when all the 
fresh preparation is finished, and the household, newly 
risen and refreshed with the morning's baptism, 
gather at the table. Nay, I doubt if there be any bet- 
ter thought at the first opening of the eyes when the 
dew of the light has anointed them. And here we 
may avail ourselves of memory to forewarn us of the 
occasions we shall encounter; of which wisely Au- 
relius says: 

" Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with 
the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, un- 
sociable; all these things happen to them by reason of their 
ignorance of what is good and evil; but I have seen the nature 
of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, 
and know that he who does wrong is my kinsman by nature, 
not only that he is of the same blood or state, but that he 
shares in the same intelligence and in the same portion of 
divinity ; I can neither be injured by any of them nor hate any, 
for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I feel anger or 
hatred toward a kinsman." 



Of Patience 141 

The wisdom and the theory of patience are very 
simple; for patience is a pure quiet; but impatience is 
a strong emotion, and therefore something that has to 
be borne or carried. Now, if we have a burden to 
lift, and add thereto impatience, what do we but add 
weight to weight ? 

Who takes ill another's ill 
Beareth two loads up the hill. 

Therefore to learn patience is the same as to learn 
to shoulder a weight with skill if we must carry it, 
but to lay it aside if that be possible. 

Secondly, we must be patient with ourselves. This 
is a point of much wisdom. It means that we must 
not ask too much of ourselves, for our powers go but 
a little way to their limits; but we must ask all that 
can be, for duty has no limits but strength. Therefore, 
it is virtue to set the mark on a summit, and patience 
to climb toward it, however long or slowly. Ask 
not indeed of ourselves anything too quickly. Cow- 
per said : " I confess fearless a mind that does not al- 
ways think;" and Locke; "The way to become 
learned is to attempt but little at a time; short flights 
will gather much if all be saved." So it is in nature, 
where no haste is ever to be seen but in impatient 
creatures. Nature and time agree. Each moment is 
charged with just itself, has no anxieties, proceeds 
unconscious of any next gone or next coming, being 
full with itself and then flown. Said Pythagoras, 
" Cor ne edito^'' eat not the heart — " a dark but true 
parable," says Bacon, for " certainly if a man would 
give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open 



142 Of Patience 

themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts," — 
thus to friendship applying the words of the old 
Grecian sage. But I will apply the saying also to 
impatient haste with ourselves. For if one will not 
wait for his own feet is it not the same as to cut them 
off? And whoever will not stay for his own hands, 
does he not the same as if he cast them by the way- 
side? And whoever lives in anxieties of self-exaction 
and speed, staying not for works to grow and ripen, 
surely he devours his own heart and feeds on himself, 
having naught else to eat, because he has only green 
fruits about him, or fruit that has dropped half-grown 
by meddlesome forcing, and nothing sweet and mel- 
lowed. But shall we not be in haste to achieve 
goodness ? Surely not. Enough to see that the move- 
ment is steady but not strained. If it is failure to be 
impatient about wisdom, intellect, or any other like 
success, so even more about the greater achievements 
of virtue and nobleness. I will say also, forgive our- 
selves; not too easily, but easily enough; I mean, let 
the dead bury their dead, and the past be past. If we 
have got wisdom from it and t^ken a lesson to heart, 
then let the pain go with it into shadow. Remorse 
may be a luxury if it fill the time to be up and 
striving afresh 

I have beer speaking of patience with the things 
which may be in our power as being common events 
on the earth ; because this is plain good sense. But now 
finally, I say we are to have patience with the power 
which is over us; because this is plain piety. Or, put 
it thus, as once I heard an aged man say reverently, 



Of Patience 143 

" We must be patient with God." Thomas Hughes 
defines patience as "a resolute waiting on God's 
mind ; " and Schefer says : 

" Goodness can have no higher sense than this, 
And no more beautiful significance, — 
Complete contentment with God's nature." 

Saadi has this saying : " A great river is not made 
turbid by a stone; a religious man who is hurt by 
injuries is as yet but shallow water." Religion states 
difficulties in terms of strength. Epictetus reproached 
those who, taking a journey to Olympia to see the 
works of Phidias, being unwilling to die without a 
sight of them, endured the discomfort, the noise and 
the crowds by reference to the merits of the spectacle, 
but compared not the ills or troubles of life with the 
great spectacle of this earth, with its skies and 
heavens, to see which required no journey; and he 
exclaimed beside that we have received faculties 
whereby to support and interpret suffering — 
" Have you not received greatness of soul, a manly 
spirit, patience?" Thus within by faculty and with- 
out by glory we are furnished with the resources of 
patience to attend on divinity; as the full-hearted say- 
ing of Haydn expresses: "The quality of infinite 
goodness inspires me with such confidence and joy 
that I could have written even a miserere in tempo 
allegroP As it is sure nothing will hasten the divine 
deliberation, which awaits the gestation of a million 
years for an g%%^ and a million million for a moral 
thought, so it is sure that we shall be but wretched 
creatui'es in this infinite patience unless we are patient 



144 ^f ^'^i^^^^<^ 

with the patience ; for as it is necessity to take things 
as they are, so it is wisdom to see this, happiness to do 
it wilhngly, rehgion to do it devoutly. Be ashamed of 
small repinings; for always fair things are to be 
found; hence, to recur to small annoyances, what is 
this but to wash in soiled water when clean ewers are 
at hand? How people trumpet their miseries, but 
for which I am persuaded that half the conversation 
in the world would cease. But Johnson said : 

" Depend upon it, that if a man talks of his misfortunes 
there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him ; 
for when there is nothing but pure misery there is never any 
recourse to the mention of it." 

Aurelius quotes from Epicurus: 

" In my sickness my conversation was not about my bodily 
sufferings, nor did I talk on such subjects to those who visited 
me; but I continued to discourse on the nature of things as be- 
fore, keeping to this main point, how the mind while partici- 
pating in such movements as go on in the poor flesh, shall be 
free from perturbations and maintain its proper good." 

Truly, the punctual glory of nature ought to shame 
us that we edge into it our little punishments for 
broken laws, to chatter thereof to each other for 
entertainment. Better was the satirical peevishness 
of King James, who seemed to set up his royal honors 
as a bar, and exclaimed to the fly, " Have I three 
kingdoms and thou must needs fly into mine eye?" 

In sum, patience is, as to nature, intelligence, being 
a judgment; and piety, being a faith in the good order 
of things; and morality, being benefaction and for- 
bearance. As to objects it is also three-fold, having 



Of Enemies 145 

two objects in the finite, ourselves and others, and 
also the Infinite and One. 



OF ENEMIES 

It has been said that Clio would be undone but for 
the existence of enmity. Burke states it boldly thus: 

"The first part of the external view of all States, their rela- 
tions as friends, makes so trifling a figure in history that I am 
very sorry to say it affords me but little matter on which to 
expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its neighbor; 
the support given in public distress; the relief afforded in gen- 
eral calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the 
mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very 
ample and very pleasing subject for history. But, alas 1 all 
the history of all times concerning all nations does not afford 
matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be spun out 
by the wire-drawing amplifications of a Guicciardini himself. 
The glaring side is that of enmity." 

An old writer, Jortin, to a like purpose, says in his 
" Remarks on Ecclesiastical History," that " Socrates, 
in the close of his work, observes that if men were 
honest and peaceable, historians would be undone for 
want of materials." If these sayings be true, it was a 
right symbol that Clio was drawn with the trumpet 
in one hand and a book in the other, for history 
records the deeds to which the trumpet calls the 
heroes. Yet was this muse also crowned with laurel, 
the reward and wreath of poets; and however busy 
with the quarrels of men who were great only in 
power and selfishness, it were a blot on the soul to 
think the first of the muses would close her book if 



146 Of Enemies. 

she dropped her trumpet, and would have no office 
if only the triumph of arts, knowledge, mechanics, 
poetry and good will were to be celebrated. In such 
a happy state there would be more need of writing 
than ever before; for a few pages will serve for the 
fighting of an army of a hundred thousand men, 
going from battle to battle in one mass; but great 
volumes would not hold the inventions, the thoughts, 
the songs, the forensic wisdom and the laws of all 
those men and of all whom they kill, working sepa- 
rately until they were grown old; and each by his own 
genius. Therefore it has been said well, and better 
than Jortin's remark, that when a great war has cut 
off the young men of a nation it never can be told 
thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and 
great designers the country and the world have suf- 
fered. 

Yet enmity will not be rooted out, and especially 
private enmity will flourish long after men learn a 
better way than to destroy each other in battles. 
Wherefore, it is no small question how to use our 
enemies to our advantage. A Frenchman has said, 
shrewdly, " If you want to succeed, make enemies; 
your friends will soon rally around you." This is the 
old truth that anything which will thrive at all — that 
is, which has good cause to live — will thrive under 
persecution; for if it do not gather outward strength 
at once, it will grow into inward vigor, which soon 
will gain a triumph. Yet it is not to the credit of 
friends, either of a person or of a cause, that they act 
not on their friendship till hurts done by foes excite 



Of Enernies 147 

their ardor. Such friendship commonly tires if the 
persecution be too long or too strong or too little; for 
if too long their devotion is outwearied ; if too pow- 
erful they are overcome, and if too little they are still 
lukewarm. Therefore the true friends who may be 
trusted are those who are always present by love, not 
waiting to be roused by rivalry; and the old sage 
spoke more justly who said, contrary to the French- 
man, that " He who hath a hundred friends hath not 
one too many, and he who hath one enemy will meet 
him everywhere." 

Yet in one way enemies give us hope of good traits 
in ourselves; for since there will beenmity, those will 
incur it most who have strong points of character, 
which as much bring them against some men as close 
to others. So that we say in general. No enemies, no 
friends. Plutarch says: "What Chilon, the wise 
man, remarked to one who said he had no enemies, 
namely: ' Thou seemst rather to have no friend,' has 
a great deal of truth; for enemies always keep pace 
and are interwoven with friendships." 

I know of nothing better said of enemies than Plu- 
tarch's reflections, from which I gather these follow- 
ing ways of extracting good from our enemies, this 
being the part of wisdom and much overlooked; for 
most persons think they have done all if they escape 
harm from their foes, whereas there is much profit to 
be obtained. An adversary may spur us on to great 
efforts to excel ; for there is pain in surpassing those 
who love us, however it be our duty to prevail; 
but to exceed any one who is hostile to us will try the 



148 Of Enemies 

heart with but a general compassion, and only a 
tender and charitable heart — which all, indeed, ought 
to be. An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for 
if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we 
shall be the more heedful to expose nothing, and 
this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness. 
EsjDCcially, what is of much importance, we shall be 
taught by enemies to avoid the appearance of evil. 
We ought not to pass by what foes say of us merely 
because it is not true, but examine whether we have 
not given some color for it in appearance. For it is 
a false, unkind and unjust independence to have 
no regard to a^^pcarance, since whatever misrepre- 
sents ourselves commits the injustice of misleading 
others. But, best of all, enemies make us watchful of 
ourselves and induce self-examination; for we must 
argue thus: our foe hates us with reason or without 
reason; if without reason, then he not really hates 
us, but some other sort of person for whom he mis- 
takes us; but if with reason, then it is plain we should 
improve, and remove the reason. Akin to this is a 
reflection of Aurelius, which he seems (and reason- 
ably) to draw much comfort from and repeats often, 
namely: 

" Wherein hast thou been injured? For thou wilt find that 
no one among those against whom thou art irritated has done 
anything by which thy mind could be made worse; but that 
which is evil to thee and harmful has its foundation only in 
the mind." 

It is easy, moreover, to see the faults of an enemy; 
but before we point out these we shall be prudent to 



Of Enemies 14c) 

consider whether we also have them not; for how 
often it happens that persons are enemies because 
both have the same faults. This is put into a com- 
mon saying-, " They cannot get along together," 
which means that both are willful and unyielding, or 
both are proud, or both are selfish, and so fly against 
each other and then apart, by the clash and repulsion 
of the same faults. 

Enemies, again, may increase our self-control by 
exercising it. How this shall be depends on whether 
we use them, or they use us. They cannot be of no 
effect; they will increase our patience or our impa- 
tience. They work us either into a vengeful or into 
a magnanimous mind. Enemies also train us in jus- 
tice. We must give even an enemy what credit he 
deserves. If thus we do, then whether we blame or 
excuse, it will be clear that we are looking at the 
wrong, not blinded by hatred of the person. This 
will gain credit for what we say. To this kind of high 
and self-contained justice, enemies may help us more 
directly than friends, perhaps, because it is so easy to 
commend the friend for love's sake, but a harder and 
higher virtue to excuse the enemy for justice's sake. 
La Rochefoucault says: " We are not bold enough to 
say in general that we have no faults, and that our 
enemies have no good qualities; but in particular we 
seem to think so." By the discipline of enemies, 
finally, we may be kept clean of the mean vice of 
envy — truly a low and miserable passion, and, as a 
philosopher has said, " more irreconcilable thim 
hatred." For if we be so hi^rh as to allow full desert 



150 Of Immortal Life 

to enemies, we shall be far too high to envy friends 
or strangers. 

Kind persons, especially poets, seem to find great 
pathos in enmity; for bards and story-tellers often 
represent hated persons as being thereby only a little 
more burdened than before, being already loaded 
with many sorrows; and poets delight in showing 
(from which we may judge that it is true to nature) 
how great alleviation to an over-weighted heart is 
a touch of kindness or love. Longfellow has said, 
" If we could read the secret heart of our enemies, we 
should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering 
enough to disarm all hostility." 



OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

I KNOW not whether there be anything more re- 
markable touching the human mind than the belief in 
a future life. No belief is older, or spread more 
widely, or more enduring; yet none has to encounter 
facts so hard and to battle against such foes. It is 
surprising that it has not been beaten to death, and 
still more that ever it arose at all. For though primi- 
tive imagination be very quick and the faith of 
primeval races very ardent and vivid, yet it seems 
strange that these powers sometimes go clean con- 
trary to observation; and this must be held, I think, 
no little tribute to the spirituality of our being. De- 
struction is a fact so obvious that it is hard to see why 
an untutored man, when he has seen a creature born, 



Of Immortal Life 151 

should not as readily think it a dream, an unreality, a 
phantom, as conceive a creature whom he has seen 
destroyed to be still living invisibly. Yet, though 
death happens, and often therewith destruction of the 
body by violence, it being torn or hewn asunder or 
burned, and when not so, yet evaporating before the 
eyes by decay or consumed by insects, there is some- 
what in human nature which triumphs over these 
attacks and wins the combat against sense, so as to 
persist that the dead creature has had only another 
birth. Now, this mighty triumph of belief, or of 
hope, or of love, or of somewhat in us indefinable, 
which takes account of facts that pertain to it, has been 
a great wrestling-ground since men began to reason 
about it. The first explanation is that the belief 
springs from an environment (which now is the sci- 
entific term in vogue), and exists because the fact is 
so, just as eyes and objects, ears and sounds, announce 
each other. Whether this be also the best, as it is the 
oldest, explanation, I will not argue, but leave the 
marvel of the belief against sense to stand as the mar- 
vel surely it is. For there has been no belief more in- 
tense; yet 'tis against a fact than which none is more 
confounding. To me it matters not much that this 
faith sickens in some minds after they have become 
full of science, when much knowledge has accrued by 
lapse of centuries; for as everything costs some other 
thing, I have wondered sometimes whether this same 
science has not made a charge, but so gradually, since 
knowledge has grown slowly, that we wot not how 
much we have paid for our philosophy. It is possi- 



153 Of Immortal Life 

ble that, as the civilized stomach could not live on the 
fare of the wild man, and the head that rests on pil- 
lows or the body that is clothed daintily would per- 
ish feverishly, unclad in the forest, and the ear, how- 
ever trained in fine music or shaken by the city's roar, 
is a dull organ for the stealth of the savage and but a 
piece of leather compared with the membranes of 
some brute creatures — so the mind has not gained its 
delicacies without loss of some rude force, or even, 
mayhap, some very fine adaptation. If there be lost 
arts and lost virtues, as history records, so there may 
be lost susceptibilities of faith; and I doubt whether 
yet it has appeared what a whole man may be, since 
man seems not to have been able ever to gain some- 
what and yet save therewith all he had already. 

To divide more particularly, I will take immortal 
life as a thought, as an emotion and as a motive. First 
as a thought — I have no reasoning to offer for it; for 
though many arguments suggest it, and conduce to 
it, I have met none which prove it, and it is common 
to say that there are none, and could not be. This, 
indeed, seems likely, because we know not in truth 
what life is. Whence, then, can we infer or predict 
anything which lies enfolded in the nature of life 
whereof we are ignorant? As to analosfies in nature 
set forth by some, by others derided, I deny not that 
these contain suggestions; though not arguments, yet 
they seem to me not so worthless as some have de- 
clared. For though it be said that butterflies, moths 
and the like creatures in their transformations really 
die not, but only change alive, still that is only to our 



Of Immortal Life 153 

superior sight which has capacity to keep them in 
view the while; but to their fellows, if we imagine 
them to think and observe, these creatures must seem 
to die and disappear when they enter the chrysalis. 
The best analogy which I have read of is in the lot 
of the dragon-fly, which first lives under water, and 
then has a change of expression or feature when at 
last it is impelled to climb a rush out of the water and 
live, which to do before had been destruction. 'Tis 
in speaking of a like analogy that Browning calls 
death a " throbbing impulse." After that, when with 
wings the creature has launched into the air, then it is 
unable, however it might wish, to dip again under the 
water. As if with such analogy in mind, and happily, 
a poet calls the dying 

" The amphibious souls that in a dumb amaze 
Hover between the earth, the grave and heaven." 

Now this up-climbing from the pool is as strange 
and mournful to the grubs left behind, if we conceive 
them to think of it, as death is to us. And it is pos- 
sible that as we follow the process among these hum- 
ble creatures, so there are benign beings who have 
attained sense to follow our change with continuity. 
As to proofs, seek none, but attend to intimations that 
come, and sometimes, indeed, seem to rain on us, as we 
go on. And this must be so in proportion to the 
depth of the life which we live; for as like minds 
know each other, so will abundance of life report 
truthfully the possibilities and expectations of it; 
therefore to live richly is to expect gloriously. 
Whence it is notable that those souls whom by com- 



154 Of Immortal Life 

mon consent men glorify most, like the sacred seven, 
to whom we may add Socrates, Plato, and a few such 
like, have been prone to this belief, or even full of 
proclamation. Emerson says: 

" All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I 
have not seen. Whatever it be which the great Providence 
prepares for us, it must be something large and generous, and 
in the great style of his works. The future must be up to the 
style of our faculties — of memory, of hope, of imagination, of 
reason." 

It is a secret of rich living to live continuously, and 
not in leaps, as it were, but in a steady on-going. For, 
if there be gaps in life, that is to say, if we lose one 
part thereof when we have entered another, then one 
part will be sure to despise another, and if life be de- 
spised in any measure, there is small opening for the 
faith of immortality. Now that this living by seg- 
ments may come to pass, and that even it may be 
called piety, we may learn from such a saying as this: 
"What is every year of a vi^ise man's life but a criti- 
cism on the past? Those whose life is the shortest 
live long enough to laugh at one-half of it. The boy 
despises the infant, the man the boy, the sage both, 
and the Christian all." I know not whose words 
these are, but whosesoever, I have small opinion of his 
wisdom or his piety, unless this be a sorry lapse from 
a better habit of mind. For mid-age having come, 
then to have arrived at naught but contempt of youth, 
is but piecemeal existence, and will lead to no knowl- 
edge of life. In contrast with this folly, I will quote 
words of Coleridge: 



Of Immortal Life 155 

" Men laugh at the falsehoods imposed on them during their 
childhood because they are not good and wise enough to con- 
template the past in the present, and so to produce by a virtu- 
ous and thoughtful sensibility that continuity in their self-con- 
sciousness which nature has made a law of their animal life. 
***** They exist hi fragmeyits. Annihilated as to the 
past, they are dead to the future, or seek for the proofs of it 
everywhere only not where alone it can be found, in them- 
eelves." 

With this Coleridge quotes Wordsworth's simple 
lines ending, 

" And I would wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety." 

This thouglTt seems deeply grafted in Wordsworth's 
mind, for in " Yarrow Revisited " he writes: 
" Brisk youth appeared, the morn of youth, 
With freaks of graceful folly; 
Life's temperate noon, her sober eve. 

Her night, not melancholy. 
Past, present, future, all appeared 

In harmony united. 
Like guests that meet, and some from far, 
By cordial love invited ;" 

and he has shown that he knows the insight which 
comes of a life unsundered and unslackened ; for, de- 
scribing the Wanderer, he says: 

" Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek 
Into a narrower circle ol deep red, 
But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows 
Shaggy and gray, had meaning which it brought 
From years of youth; which, like a being made 
Ot many beings, he had wondrous skill 
To blend with knowledge of the years to come 
Human, or such as lie beyond the grave," 



1^6 Of Immortal Life 

Coleridge's saying, " They exist in fragments," is 
the key to much despair; and certainly he can not 
have any waiTant in himself for a future life who has 
broken this one to pieces. 

Now, secondly, as emotion, or a source thereof, the 
thought of the future life is first, health; secondly, 
splendor; thirdly, germane to love. For I think it is 
well said that "a healthy mind desires to live;" nor 
do I hold indifference as courage, but esteem it either 
ignorance or insensibility. As to splendor, can any- 
thing be vaster, grander, more glorious than the 
thought of continuity and of a life which at maturity 
is stdl at infancy ? And as to love, the heart plainly 
longs for perpetuity, and love is dead if it admit 
death. Aurelius has this passage of stoic piety: 

"The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it 
were wax, now molds a horse, and when it has broken this up 
it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for some- 
•thing else, and each of these things subsists for a very short 
time. But it is no hardship for a vessel to be broken up, just 
as there was none in its being fastened together." 

I think there is piety herein, but perhaps a lapse m 
philosophy ; for, mayhap, there is hardship if a think- 
ing creature, being wrought, be led to an end, where- 
as it is the nature of thought to be unlimited. And 
this is the answer to another passage of Aurelius: 

" The healthy eye ought to see all things and not to say, I 
wish for green things, for this is the condition of a diseased 
eye; and the healthy heai-ing and smelling ought to be ready 
to perceive all that can be heard and smelled ; and the healthy 
stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill 
with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And 



Of Immortal Life 157 

accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared 
for anything that happens ; but that which says, Let my dear 
child live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is the eye 
which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft 
things." 

But though the healthy stomach will not be too 
delicate to cope with whatever can be digested, yet it 
is healthy according to its nature, which is to digest. 
And in like manner it is the nature of love to cling 
and not to give way, and to demand for itself ever- 
lastingness ; and love does this to perfection if it be 
healthy. 

Thirdly, though as a thought I conceive the im- 
mortal life just, and as an emotion glorious, as a motive 
it is bad, servile. " If death," says a preacher, " ter- 
minates man's conscious existence, it will be alike to 
the most prosperous sinner and the most self-sacrific- 
ing saint after the termination of this earthly scene." 
But it is unethical and faithless thus to value moral 
differences by future events. The preacher illustrates 
his bad doctrine thus: 

" Of all the sinners of the first French Revolution, perhaps 
none was more detestable than Fouche ; yet by his adroitness 
he succeeded in evading every danger which engulfed his com- 
rades in iniquity, and after a prosperous life he died quietly in 
his bed. * * * On the other hand, the Apostle Paul, after 
a life spent in toil and suffering, perished by the ax of the exe- 
cutioner. Yet if there is no hereafter, and if the only reward 
of self-sacrifice and the only punishment of crime are those 
which happen in the present life, it would have been far better 
to be Fouch6 than Paul." 

He that thinks this servility dignity, this baseness 
morality, this appraisal virtue, has not learned the com- 



158 Of Immortal Life 

plexion of calculation and understands not when men 
dicker with Providence and would cozen righteous- 
ness of her robes. If it were better to be a villain for 
ten years, or even for one moment, then it were bet- 
ter forever. If a man had a stomach which could 
digest garbage and carrion without sickness, still, 
would he be better than swine or vultures if he liked 
the filthy foods? For though the strength of the 
stomach might master them, its virtue as a man's 
stomach should loathe them. So, whoever would be 
vile for these passing years if they were all, is but a 
barterer for heaven ; nay, like a man chaffering for 
fruits which he has not the stomach to retain ; for the 
unheavenly mind could not receive heaven, but only 
transport its own pit elsewhere — as Milton's Satan 
cries out: 

*' Which way I flj is hell ! Myself am hell ! " 
It is a fine thought of the poet Schefer, that 
strangely we insist so much on the eternity to come, 
and yet never care for or bemoan the eternity gone; 
and a like thought Aurelius puts in these words: 
" Men set much value on being praised by posterity, 
by those whom they have never seen nor ever will 
see; but this is very much the same as if thou shouldst 
grieve because those who have lived before thee did 
not praise thee." Why, indeed, say we that we must 
go on living in order to make this life glorious, and 
yet never insist on reclaiming the vanished past? If 
this life be not glorious, lofty and a great privilege 
and dignity in itself, I know not why it needs comple- 
tion at one end more than at the other, or must draw 



Of Immortal Life 159 

after It the future while yet cut from the past. This 
shows we ought to find glory here, now, even if there 
be nothing more; and surely it is greediness to think 
this life good for nothing if no other be to come. 
Truly I am ashamed of this bad feeling and evil 
grasping, and that it should be cloaked with religion. 
The true piety is like that of Aurelius: 

" How can it be that the gods, after having arranged all 
things well and beneficially for mankind, have overlooked this 
alone, that some men, and very good men, and men who, as 
we may say, have had most communion with the divinity, 
when once they have died, should never exist again, but be 
completely extinguished? But if this be so, be assured that if 
it ought to have been otherwise the gods would have done it, 
and if it were according to nature, nature would have had it so. 
For thou seest even of thyself that in this inquiry thou art 
arguing with the deity, and we would not argue with the gods 
unless they were most excellent and just; but if this be so, they 
would not have allowed anything in the ordering of the uni- 
verse to be neglected unjustly and irrationally." 

In accordance with this he says in another place : 

" Pass, then, through this little space of time conformably to 
nature and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off 
when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking 
the tree on which it grew." 

Whoever rejoices not in this life, with exultation and 
thanksgiving, will have no better knowledge of an- 
other, either before it is come or after he is in it. For 
life is all one, like a web unrolling; and if one yard 
of it be mean, the whole pattern is condemned. 



OF DEATH 

Death Heth still in the way of life, 

Like as a stone in the way of a brook ; 

I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does, 

I will make thee into music which does not die. 

— Sidney Lanier. 
Albeit my interest in death is wholly from the 
spiritual side, having no elemental or physiological 
knowledge of it, yet I may divide discourse of it into 
two parts, one of which will have regard to the body. 
I will treat first of death as a physical fact, and 
secondly of some moral thoughts clustering around it. 
In the first part I will speak of the fear of death, the 
ease, the simplicity of it, and its aspect as a function 
of life; and in the second part will follow the thoughts 
of the possible vicinity of the dead, the democracy of 
death, and the look of dead faces. 

The fear of death has been raised too much and set 
up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen 
serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israel- 
ites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, 
for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made 
into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid 
spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be 
frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of 
religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us 
plentifully. I think if the priests spoke not of death 
in order to make the fear of it the greater, the 
healthy human heart would take less note of it. Not. 
(i6o) 



Of Death i6i 

withstanding, the fear of it belongs to the nature of 
the bodily hfe; for the body has an instinctive recoil 
from danger, injury, destruction ; which is no more 
than to say, in another way, that it is living. Where- 
fore this recoil is so much the greater as health and 
vitality are stronger; and yet health, which is only an 
exuberant sense of life bounding and abundant, will 
make death less present or habitual to thought; so 
that the force of life which recoils from death is that 
very thing which shuts it out from imagination. 

When death lodges in the mind, the foreboding 
springs, if I have counted all, from three classes of 
feeling, which may work separately or all together, 
according to individual experiences. These are, first, 
uncertainty or terror as to what may come after the 
change, which the familiar words of Hamlet set 
forth: 

" The dread of something after death, 
The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will." 

Secondly, attachment to a happy life, to surround- 
ing pleasures, and especially to dear and sacred loves; 
and this sometimes takes the form of intense curiosity 
as to events forthcoming, especially if one's lot be cast 
in moving epochs and great exigencies, which incite 
the ardent soul to a mighty grip and desire of life, 
imtil the issue of great events shall become clear. 
Thirdly, the painful conditions which attend death 
sometimes, and to the mind or the fear of many per- 
sons always; for even if none be visible, many fear 
an obscure and unpresented agony in the rending of 



i62 Of Death 

life from the body ; which terror springs from unnat- 
ural, and thence constrained, unsightly, and painful 
dissolutions, especially by violent diseases; for these 
once witnessed, or even described, will make strong 
impress on imagination. Nevertheless, nature has 
her ways of death, as shortly I shall say, which are 
sightly and kind ; and it is well if the imagination lay 
hold of these, as Browning does when he speaks of 
death as " half a pang, and all a rapture." 

The fear of death is slighter in youth, because 
youth reflects less and especially of the future, and 
also, perhaps, as finely has been said, because it is the 
time of life " before the habit of living has been very 
firmly established." The fear is greatest in mid-age, 
because then the mind ponders much, and because 
life, wherein it is affected by the body, then is at its 
highest, memory being then most vivid, present en- 
joyment keenest, and the future most hopeful. The 
fear is least in old age, because desire and strength 
have been satisfied; which a poet thus figures: 

"Just as a child, that at its mother's breast 
Has drunk its fill so eagerly, that now 
Its eyes stand staring open, and its lips 
Tremble, like those of a worn out old man ; 
And both of them sink down in one sweet sleep." 

I find the fear of death rises and falls, being greater 
at one time and less at others, or falling indeed to 
nothing. This observation I have made in myself. 
Whence I conclude that the foreboding varies with 
health, bodily and mental ; if which be true, it is plain 
that death causes not wholly and substantially the fear 



Of Death 163 

of it, which it would do if truly and in itself it were 
a fearful thing (as it can not be rationally, since it 
is natural), but that the fear springs from affections 
which come between us and death like a distorting 
vapor. For I have found the fear of death less as the 
soul is elastic, joyful, healthful, in good morality and 
at peace; wherefore Bacon's saying falls true in a 
very noble sense, that " death is no such terrible 
enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about 
him that can win the combat of him." 

It is my observation that fear of death is not much 
present to life's occupations and pleasures; this is 
right and natural, for wisdom has always its hands 
full with the moment which is. Therefore, memento 
mori is a needless maxim, and rather to be ascribed to 
the priests, as I have said, than to healthy sense ; and, 
as Bacon says on this point, " in I'eligious meditation 
there is sometimes a mixture of vanity and supersti- 
tion." Memento vivere were better, wise and 
salutary, as Aurelius says thus: "If thou shalt be 
afraid, not because thou must some time cease to live, 
but if thou shalt fear never to have begun to live ac- 
cording to nature, then thou wilt be a man worthy of 
the universe which has produced thee." 

The ease and simplicity of death has been remarked 
very often; yet it is not pondered as it should be per- 
haps, so admirable and beautiful is it. Animals show 
terror of destruction, but I think never any fear of 
dying; and this not because of their ignorance, but 
because death is so soft and gentle a passage. Our 
dumb fellow creatures recognize in some sense the 



164 Of Death 

advent of the change, and go apart from their fellows, 
even sometimes into very secluded and hidden places; 
so that I have read that the dead of some of the wiser 
of the creatures never have been found. This they 
do, quietly and even in confinement; as, in gardens of 
natural history, high creatures like intelligent apes 
have been seen to lie down for death with a very clear 
look of comprehension in the eye. Man, who can 
utter his sensations, has witnessed to the ease of death 
very often. When the physician told Anquetil his 
end was near, he said: " My friend, you behold a man 
dying full of life." William Hunter said: " If I had 
strength to hold a pen I would write how easy and 
delightful it is to die." Fontenelle, being asked if he 
suffered, answered, " I only feel a difficulty of exist- 
ing." Haller kept his expert touch on his own pulse 
and said calmly at last to a brother physician, "My 
friend, the artery beats no longer." I have read that 
an officer wounded in a naval battle said, as life 
ebbed, " I had no idea it was so pleasant a thing to 
die; "and that Solander, having nearly perished in 
the snow with cold, was so pleased with the sensa- 
tions that he resented his rescue; and that a man who 
w^as nearly drowned resisted resuscitation with all his 
power, because the sinking away of his senses he 
found so delightful. Florence Nightingale has re- 
ported that indifference is the usual state, but that 
divers diseases have divers effects; so that in some the 
dying show a peculiar peace, even joyfulness, which 
sometimes is rapturous; but in others terror or despair 
appears. The like observations have been made on 



Of Death 165 

death mechanically enforced, the face being distorted 
when a shot wound has inflicted it, but calm when a 
sword has cut the life-thread. Whence is it not to be 
concluded plainly that it is not death that is affrighting 
or an evil, for this is the same fact in all the condi- 
tions; but the different states or incidents of the body 
that take death differently ? And so, too, they might 
take heat, cold, food, sleep differently, and sometimes 
painfully, though these be all natural and delightful. 
Higginson narrates that an eminent physician assured 
him that in all his medical experience he never met a 
dying person who was afraid of dying. These trib- 
utes to the softness and the ease of death, the 
delightfulness of the approach of the great change, 
are very plentiful, and will affect the mind deeply if 
reason dwell on them. It is a truth which seems to 
have repeated itself in all ages, for mythologies give 
a domestic and peaceable turn to death, as in a beauti- 
ful fable of ancient India that the death messenger is 
the soul of the first man, who thus perpetually comes 
back to call patriarchally each of his descendants to 
follow him. 

From this I pass to the aspect of death as a func- 
tion of life; for certainly it is no other kind of act 
than a living act, and as much so as sleeping, which 
always has been called its twin brother. Schefer ex- 
claims, "Man dies alive; think upon that for once!" 
Yet it is to be remarked that this idea comes only 
with knowledge, for savages believe only in violent 
deaths as natural, but other deaths they think come 
by magic or sorcery. Did not religion continue the 



i66 Of Death 

like when it proclaimed death to be the wages of sin ? 
and thereby did it not nourish witchcraft, and the 
evil eye, and many superstitions, by which, even into 
late time, death has been explained, after the barbar- 
ous manner, by sorcery ? Schef er has a daring, yet a 
religious way, of proclaiming death a living function, 
saying that God did not " invent " it. 

"Love — life — death — God hath not invented them; 
He tlirough eternity w^as life itself, 
And will be blissful life in love and death 
While he abides — that is eternally." 

Nay, Browning calls death even a culmination, age 
being " The last of life for which the first was made," 
and then " Let age approve of youth, and death com- 
plete the same;" which thought Schef er states thus 
more at length : 

" Each time a task 
Is done, there is also a taking leave 
Of it; to drain the beaker is to take 
Leave of the draught ; to rise from table means 
A parting from the meal; to rise from bed 
A parting from the sleep and from the dream, 
Which man shall sleep no more, shall dream no more. 
Every completion is at the same time 
A final parting from it, as the artist 
Parts from his work. * * * * 
Only to shake out nut shells from their laps 
Have the departing." 

But I speak of death at death's time; for whatever 
is natural has its natural season. Therefore it is well 
to distinguish between timely and untimely death; and 
I like not the religion which loads the untimely deaths 



Of Death 157 

on Providence, while in truth they belong to our dis- 
obedience. It is not piety but folly to treat all alike. 
A wi'iter well calls it strange that we have only one 
word for the natural end or completion of life, and 
for its interruption, " for the event," he says, " which 
closes a long day's toil and for that which crashes like 
a thunderbolt into the opening blossom of family 
life." Epictctus has it that death is no evil, as it is 
not an evil to ripe corn to be reaped: but if the corn 
be not ripe then the nature of it is thwarted, and this 
is an evil. The which evil, I say, I will lay on the 
folly of men, and not on the intention of God. 
Schefer has a better piety, saying that an untimely 
death is painful to us in that dire way which the de- 
parture of reverent age never affects us withal, 
because the Eternal mind is iniwilling. Thus he 
says: 

" Untimely death is woe, 
A breach of life, life breaks in two with pain! 
Pain seizes on the great Eternal spirit 
Who forfeits, and for naught, a form of his; 
And this same pain the sufferer must bear. 

if. -if. -if. -^ ■/(. 

It burns the living ones who gather round," 

While I must call death a living function, as plainly 
it is, yet it is an act of a high organism, and so has on 
it the stamp of nature's completion of her ideal; for 
death is the stopping of the motion of an organism, 
but not a destruction of the organism, which follows 
only by slow degrees and by inorganic agents when 
the mystery of the life-power has ceased. But there 



1 68 Of Death 

are creatures whose only possible extinction is destruc- 
tion. A scientific writer says: 

" Death is not an attribute that belongs to all organisms ; 
there are many of the lower organisms which, although they 
can be destroyed, are not compelled to die. In the division of 
the amoebae we can not call it death, for where is the corpse? 
Let us suppose an amoeba to possess consciousness ; it would 
then, on dividing, say to itself : 'I have cut off from myself a 
daughter.* I do not doubt that each half would think that the 
other half was the daughter, and would look upon itself as the 
original individual." 

Whence it appears, as I have said, that death is a high 
act, belonging to superiority. 

Death always has been notable as a mystery; and 
certainly it is a strange thing and altogether inex- 
plicable that such a quiet suddenly should descend 
upon intelligence so active but a moment before. 
For what the activity was, or in what way stopped, 
or whither the power has gone, we can not follow. 
It is certainly past all understanding that looking 
on the eye full of the life of thought and of love, 
we see a glaze of unmeaninguess come over it; for 
what has become of the thought, the love, how it 
could cease, and if not ceasing whither flown, the 
whole world has tried to say immemorially, yet never 
said. But, it is worthy of remark and of constant re- 
flection, that the mystery of death is no greater than 
the mystery of birth. 

" How one who stood before thee in the flesh 
Could from such sunshine vanish out of sight 
That by the grave thou sadly ponderest. 

* * « 4: * 



Of Death 169 

But take now wonder for wonder, joy for grief; 
How one who was so long invisible 
In such a sunshine can at length appear, 
That by the infant's cradle ponder thou." 

The two mysteries are exact opposites, birth being 
a mystery of advent, and death of departure; for at 
birth we wonder whence the soul comes, at death 
whither it goes. Now, as to receive is joyful, and to 
give up is painful, and therefore the advent a happy 
mystery and death a sad one, the greater awe which 
most persons have of death seems to speak the greater 
intensity of grievous than of joyful feeling; but I 
question whether this be a fact creditable to our piety, 
and whether, if duly we were grateful, the wrench of 
our affections at a death would be any more poignant 
than the exaltation of them by a birth. And if this 
were so, would not the mystery of the one so balance 
and illumine the secret of the other as to cast the light 
and glow of faith all about it ? If we follow Plutarch, 
and that manner of looking at life which the poets 
have, and which it is safe to follow, we shall see life 
so thronged with mysteries, and every step and change 
in it such a secret, that death will seem but one of a 
large fellowship, into which other secrets run, as 
rivers into a sea, all of one substance. Plutarch quotes 
from Heraclitus, that " it is the same thing to be dead 
and alive, asleep and awake, a young man and 
decrepit; for these alternately are changed one into 
another." This is like the science of physicists, who 
show us that all forces — as light, heat, electricity — are 
interchangeable, so that one is continually waking 



lyo Of Death 

from another, and then sleeping in another, and thence 
reawaking, so that all the forces are but one in different 
forms. In like manner, whatever death be, it can not 
be a gap, as when something is cut off or broken; 
for this is contrary to the interchangeableness of 
nature's elements. What natural thing is there that 
comes not by degrees and gradations? Neither can 
death be thought of as an amazement; either it must 
be extinction or no surprise, and so in either case no 
surprise. 

To know death we must know life. Goethe says: 
"Thou wouldst be pleased with death? Then why 
always at variance with life?" And Seneca to like 
effect: *' If we are anxious about the future, it is be- 
cause we use not the present." They then will be 
pleased with death who are pleased with life, and 
they will enter on dying with vigor who have lived 
with industry. This is a brave thought. Once I met 
a man who averred that he could not think of a life 
hereafter because he found this life so magnificent. 
The trees, he said, the hillsides, the waters, the sun- 
beams, so laughed and joyed and disported in his 
eyes that life had its full for him ; and how could any- 
thing, he asked, be more than full, or how could he 
dream reasonably of something more when once he 
was satisfied. I would not commend his judgment, 
though the joyful thankfulness was beautiful; better 
the soaring imagination of the apostle, that eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man con- 
ceived, what yet may be in store; and our hymnist 
Hosmer's sounding of infinity: 



Of Death 171 

" Thy good is prophecy 
Of better still to be, 
In the future thou shalt find 
How far the fact hath left behind 
Thy fondest dreams." 

If SO we live as to take in a common way, without 
wonder or imagination, but as commonplace things, 
all our life's happenings, then nothing is left to be 
uncommon but death, which therefore will appall and 
trouble us, and loom up strangely, and the experience 
of the strange will be fearful to us. The secret, 
therefore, is that if life be rich in religious awe as to 
all things, death will excite no other emotion than 
well we are used to; thus the rich life makes the nat- 
ural death, or death natural. But distinguish well 
in this matter, and consider where this thought is 
brave and true, and at what point it becomes over- 
ripened, as it were, and decays to a fall; for to court 
death and profess ardor for it, as if it were the busi- 
ness of life to set about dying, often has been a foolish 
vein of piety. I know not what has had more deceits 
about it and more vain imaginings than piety; and 
this naturally enough, for always the best things are 
most prone to perversion. To desire death is not to 
be pleased with it, but to be displeased with life; and 
Seneca says wisely, " Nothing is baser than to wish to 
die." Things that dispose to this wish are weariness, 
weakness, pain, love, disappointment and even, some- 
times, curiosity. For I have read of Plato's disciples 
that so they were ravished by their master's descrip- 
tions of the hereafter that they killed themselves to 



1 72 Of Death 

enter those glories. But this was no better than 
pleasure seeking. And of Hke baseness are most mo- 
tives that urge to die. Yet not all ; for if one be in 
great and incurable straits of bodily pain, it seems not 
thankless, neither cowardly, nor in any way base, to 
wish a bodily end to them. And some wise men 
have thought, indeed, that in such case human life 
might be taken mercifully, and with wise precautions, 
just as we deal mercifully with dumb creatures in 
like condition. On this opinion I determine not; for 
whether yet we have the wisdom, the knowledge and 
the goodness for such responsibilities, is not plain. 
But the morality of the wish and will to live is to be 
enforced, for this is simple duty and manly courage. 
Wish and will to recover have much to do with hold- 
ing death at a distance. Under strong feeling persons 
have turned back from the very gates of death — 
yea, recrossed the threshold of it and leased anew 
chambers of time for a season; on the other hand, 
persons have died because they would. A physician 
once assured me he had seen a man will himself out 
of the world in whom was no physical ill whatever. 
I come now to the second part of my discourse of 
death, and shall speak of some thoughts that gather 
around it; of vv^hich the first is, the possible nearness 
of the dead about us. We have only to inspect our 
ignorance to know how easily such a fact may be; so 
that, though there may be no sensible evidence, yet it 
offends not reason or knowledge. If a man but goes 
from one room to another, why we see him not 
through a wooden partition yet behold him again if 



Of Death 173 

he walk past a glass door, we can not tell ; for why 
through wood we see not and yet look through glass, 
is beyond all our philosophy. Yet what more know 
we of the barriers between us and the living dead, 
and of the limits or cause whereby our sight and hear- 
ing of them cease? Wherefore it is no foolish 
thought that they may be as near as one of us to an- 
other in different rooms of the same house, or in 
different houses of the same city, or in different coun- 
tries of the same world ; for in all these cases we are 
beyond interview and audience, yet know not by 
what laws or means vibrations touch not our eyes 
and ears. Also we know that betwixt the greatest 
number of pulsations that will twinge the ear, and the 
smallest number thereof which impinging on the 
nerve affect it as heat, there is a great gap, the pulsa- 
tions in which rouse no sense in us; and again, 
another vast multitude of vibrations betwixt the 
boundary of heat and the beginning of light; and 
another illimitable space thereof beyond violet lumi- 
nosity; to all of which we have no sensibility. Yet 
why we know not, nor whether other creatures may 
not have perceptions of these intervening areas of 
motions which we perceive not; nor whether all the 
senses were not long a-growing, and became five in 
number only after countless ages, and whether others 
be not now a-growing, or some waiting perhaps to 
burst at the change which we call death, as light might 
burst on a man born blind. Wherefore there is 
beauty and not folly in the suggestion which some 
have offered that to die may be like growing a new 



174 Of Death 

sense; and since the gaps are so many and vast 
wherein we have no perception of motions, and at last 
we reach an infinitude of them into which we can not 
pass, I must suspect a great company of things and 
beings all about us not now perceivable by any sense; 
and whether hereafter to be perceivable, who can 
tell? — a wonderful unimaginable order of life wherein 
are all beauties (since what order of life is not full ?) 
and warm with love, since so is the highest order 
which we wot of. There must be heavens which 
contain ours. 

Another thought which charms me is the democ- 
racy of death, because it comes to all, and in the same 
quiet lays great and little, opening the portal to a 
troop of chemical dissectors which know no difference 
of flesh. As to powers and possessions, the democ- 
racy of death has full sway ; for as darkness makes all 
things of one hue, so death brings to one color all 
things except good and evil. The Arabians have a 
story which pictures how death handles the tinsel of 
fortune. Haroon Er-Rasheed, at a grand f6te which 
he was giving, ordered a poet to depict in verse the 
sensuous enjoyments of his sovereign. The poet 
began thus: 

"Live long in the safe enjoyment of thy desires, in the 
shadow of thy lofty palaces." 

"Well said," exclaimed Er-Rasheed, " and what next?" 
" May thy wishes be abundantly fulfilled, whether at even- 
tide or in the morning." 

"Well again," said the Khaleefeh^ "then what next.'' " 

" And when the rattling breath struggles in the dark cavities 



Of Death 175 

of the chest, then shalt thou know surelj that thou hast been 
only in the midst of illusions." 

Er-Rasheed wept, and Fadl, the son of Gahya, said: "The 
Prince of the Faithful sent for thee to divert him, and thou 
hast filled him with much grief." 

"Suffer him," said the Prince, " for he hath beheld us in 
blindness, and it displeased him to increase it." 

Like to this is Maundeville's account of Prester 
John, that, besides gold, silver, and jewels in token of 
the Emperor's greatness, "they carry before him also 
a platter of gold full of earth, in token that his noble- 
ness and his might and his flesh shall turn to earth." 

Of the democracy of death touching the mind, that 
we know not so surely. Some have thought that 
hereafter all would be equal, genius and all differ- 
ences lying wholly in the brain, which is but an im- 
plement. By this reasoning a dull man is simply like 
a workman with a poor tool. 'Tis said that he is no 
carpenter who can not bore with a hand-saw and saw 
with a gimlet. Nevertheless, good tools avail, and 
the rarest spirit with a twisted instrument will make 
but ill work. Bacon has this thought thus: "The 
soul having shaken off her flesh doth then set up for 
herself, and contemning things that are under, shows 
what finger hath enforced her, for the souls of idiots 
are of the same piece with those of statesmen, but 
now and then nature is at a fault, and this good guest of 
ours takes soil in an imperfect body, and so is slack- 
ened from showing her wonders, like an excellent 
musician which can not utter himself upon a defective 
instrument." This is a humane hope for pitiful and 
unsound brains, that here seem like thick meshes 



176 Of Death 

around a Hon, hiding his shape and showing only his 
struggles. But that this measures the whole, who can 
tell? For we are of many elements, and very won- 
derfully made in the parts that we can see; so where- 
fore not perhaps more wonderfully and with more 
delicate complexity in the parts under those parts? 
Hence, souls may exceed one another in fineness or in 
power even more than bodies do. 

As to bodies, the democracy of death is certain and 
comjolete; for all " thaw, melt and resolve themselves 
into dew " at touch of that shining ebon mace, and all 
mingle, like waters of many colors running to one 
hue. If " all that tread the earth are but a handful to 
the tribes that slumber in its bosom," as our poet says, 
'tis like there is no particle of matter on the surface of 
the earth that some time has not done vital service in 
a living creature, beat in some heart, or in some brain 
vibrated with sense or thought. In a gentle mouth 
or savage jaw, in a hand or a claw, or many times in 
each, it has lived. Who knows when he walks on 
the matter and with his feet spurns the atoms which 
yet may beam at him from beloved eyes ? It is no im- 
agination, but soberness of fact, that in a tropic jungle 
the beast of prey discharges from his lungs an atom 
which then caught up by a plant and lodged in a 
fruit is in the fine juice that we relish ; and forthwith 
the matter that rent the tiger's prey, or uttered his 
roar, now croons a mother's lullaby over the cradle. 
'Tis a great wonder how the same atoms obey such 
different spirits, and one substance that once reeked 
with the rank sweat or stretched to the vulgar leer of 



Of Death 1 77 

a clown now is serviceable in the fiber and smile of 
gentle breeding. But this is the democracy of death, 
which lets no substance be entailed, and makes all 
bodies common, yet wonderfully leaves the spiritual 
being intact, as in and out the atoms go, molded by 
the shape and nature of the mind. 

This thought has the reach to point to a seat above 
mortality. For the drift of matter through our bodies 
affects not our identity; and if not one atom or two, or 
a hundred at once, why then should all together rob us 
of ourselves? Veiy likely the same atom will serve 
many times in us; or we use in our way particles 
which some ancestor employed, whereby the same 
matter is burned many times over in smiles, gestures, 
tones, which have a family likeness. Meantime, the 
spiritual features are untouched, neither is the mind 
changed either by loss or by addition, while it dis- 
tributes the atoms into forms and again cuts them 
loose. Here then is a spirit of unimpeachable identity 
in a frame which is as fluent as water. 

The look of death in the features of the face is a 
noteworthy bodily fact. For often it has been re- 
marked that an unwonted nobility and even grandeur 
awakes in a countenance when its motions have ceased. 
Lavater has written: 

" Of the many dead persons that I have seen I have ob- 
served uniformly that sixteen, eighteen or twenty-four hours 
after death, according to the disease, they have had a' more 
beautiful form, better defined, more proportionate, harmonious, 
homogeneous, more noble, more exalted than they ever had 
during life. Among the dying I have observed some who 



178 Of Death 

•were the reverse of noble or great during their life who some 
hours after their death, or perhaps some moments — one was in 
a delirium — have shown an inexpressible ennobling of the 
countenance. Everybody saw the new man — coloring, draw, 
ing, grace, all was new, all bright as the morning, heavenly ; 
beyond expression noble and exalted; the most inattentive 
must see, the most insensible feel, the image of God. I saw it 
break forth and shine through the ruin of corruption; was 
obliged to turn aside in silence and adore." 

If there be in all (as who can doubt and live?) a 
natural incorruptible ideal, it is according to this that 
the features should be expressive; but this expression 
is overlaid by our evil will, our passions, our perver- 
sions, which pull the earthly image of the flesh awry. 
Now, when these cease, the form seems to settle back 
nearer to its intended shape, according to the ideal 
around which first it was builded. Hence a gain in 
nobleness of expression, and sometimes a startling 
change, and even an exaltation, as Lavater has said. 

Thus having spoken of death as to the body, and 
again as to some thoughts that attend it, it is worthy 
of reflection before we part with it, that it has a mean- 
ing for us touching the living, namely, that we should 
behave well to them ; for soon they must end and we 
end, and at the farthest not late, and mayhap at any 
instant. Then, when any die, and we, being left and 
standing beside what they have left, look backward, 
since we can not see forward — 

" The days, to suffering and to loving ones, 

Seein now for the first time true holy times ; 

Now glowing memory sees that all the days 

Of life were just so holy, just so rare, 

So matchless; yet, who thinks of this?" 



Of Death 179 

The poet means, Who thinks of this while the flying 
days pass ? Yet we might see them beautiful, sacred, 
tender, or at least more see them so than we do at the 
time of them. Whence comes loss, as precious days 
go by ungathered, and sorrow afterward, when we 
look down from the death-height on their vacancies. 
The poet says again, the German Schefer: 
"Revere the living, stand in awe of them, 

They may one day, and soon, before thine eyes 
Become dead men ; and whatsoe'er of harm 
Thou day by day hast ever done to them 
That thou hast done to poor, poor, poor dead men, 

****** 
And on thyself the deed comes rushing back ; 
The earth now with her open eye — the grave — 
Stares at thee for it. 

The blow thou gavest the poor sick dog 
Will awake remorse in thee when he is dead." 
The sanctity of the last time is worthy of reflection, 
for it sets up as on a shrine even the most common 
things. However of little moment the act, it would 
be a hard nature that would not pause at the instant 
with a cei'tain awe if knowing that now for the last 
time the act was to be done. But this lifts everything 
into a tenderness and sanctity, if one weigh it rightly, 
since it is certain that the last time will happen, yet, 
when happening shows not. This morality Schefer 
has clothed tenderly in his verse: 

" For the last time all things begin henceforth 
So softly to occur ; for the last time 
The almond blooms, how sweetly, wondrously ; 
****** 



I So Of Emergency 

For the last time now comes the father home 
With such a friendly joy in all his kin; 
For the last time the sun goes down ; the stars 
For the last time climb up the darkling sky ; 
For the last time on yonder moonlit hill 
The children sing their songs of Easter night. 
For the last time around the table all 
The gathered loved ones sit. For the last time 
The children tell the mother a good-night, 
The mother on each forehead prints a kiss 
And clasps them long in silence to her breast. 
For the last time comes sleep, the friend of man; 
For the last time a holy stillness reigns — 
Till suddenly the parting startles all." 

This has a tone of joy in it, for deep joys are as 
serious as sorrows. And I would not counsel gloom 
at all, nor soberness in excess; yet we might treat 
passing moments more sacredly than we do, to the 
effect of more joy in the act and more peace in the 
remembrance. 



OF EMERGENCY 

I HAVE noticed that short-necked people think 
quickly, the long-necked slowly. Whether this be 
because the head is then the nearer to the centre of 
vital effluence in the heart or the farther from it I 
know not, but the fact I have observed. Indeed, I 
have it plainly set forth in myself. For I have much 
mental inertia. It takes me long to get in motion. I 
have to gaze at an assemblage of facts a long time be- 
foi-e a path appears in the tangle, either for speech or 
for action. And my neck is more a crane's than an 



Of Emergency i8i 

owl's. But howsoever this difference may report in 
bodily shape, certainly it is an important difference, 
and makes one man a leader and another a baggage 
in an emergency. Yet, in another kind of balance, 
the baggage may weigh more than the man who 
drags it along in a stress. Emergency is a sud- 
den coming forth of a strait or difficulty which 
demands a quick accession of power to meet it, be- 
cause it grows worse if tardily encountered. In such 
a stress, when the right word or act must be in- 
stant, one man will leap to it while another is casting 
about; and with others, emergency quenches all 
thinking in a kind of amazement. Whether the quick- 
thinking mind or the slow-thinking be the higher 
may be questioned; but certainly the two are differ- 
ent, and each is the better in his own place. I have 
heard of a Hebrew scholar who was wont to part 
men into two classes: " Those who know more than 
they know, and those who know less than they 
know;" by which sententious remark he meant that 
some know more than appears, or indeed than thev 
can manage, because they can never get their forces 
out at call, either for parade or to battle; but others 
know less than they pi'omise, because they parade 
their detachments so quickly and so imposingly. The 
one can do at command; the other needs warning, 
and asks waiting if anything is to be had from him. 
The one can give a quick buffet, and like enough a 
strong one, in exigency; the other can pierce irresist- 
ibly but slowly in search of fact or law, like a screw 
of very fine thread. That which obtains in all 



iS^ Of Emergency 

emergency is that if the moment be lost it never 
comes back; wherefoi"e it is well to store knowledge 
richly, but to give time also to j^ractice the mind in 
arts of access to the store; for a man is poor who has 
treasures locked in a high tower but flings the key 
into every surge of emotion. 

So far of mental and practical emergencies. But 
there are moral ; and these are of temptation and of 
endurance. Exigencies of temptation give the poet 
his ti'agcdies; for is there anything really tragical but 
moral failure? Sometimes one yields to a sudden 
great allurement who has won the combat of many 
weaker assaults. But this is rare, and usually when 
the temptation has to help it either some other evil 
disposition not combated, as hatred, ambition, greed, 
or some strong good emotion, as when a man steals 
food for his hungry infant, wherein the poignancy of 
holy love is the onset against moral observance. But 
this, I say, is rare, and he who wins in the many 
common temptations will have a rush of jDower, as if 
guardian forces attend him, to meet a precipitate 
exigency of enticement. Emergency of temptation is 
like a sudden fiery assay that analyzes rich virtue 
from a meager ore which has had an untried repute. 

" How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false 
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins 
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars," 

only because the fashion of their neighborhood goes 
not to the barber, but who, when plucked by the 
beard by abrupt danger are shown weaklings. A 
vast deal of uprightness there is which itself stands 



Of Emergency 183 

not, but is held up by custom, by sheltered place, by 
respectable precincts, and falls when emergent weight 
of temptation is too much for these props — as the 
flying angels of a play-house drop if the invisible 
wires break. Hence great crimes shoot, astonishing 
us, done by long trusted persons. But the criminal's 
correctness was not honesty, but a polite code well 
fenced in fine houses — which two a crucible of temp- 
tation distinguishes. It is a happy point for human 
nature that we take for granted the virtue and cour- 
age of the well-chambered, the untried, and look for 
it. For this is no amiable weakness. There must be 
much truth in the general faith that the common 
goodness is more than an erect posture shored up; 
and doubtless the greater number are good stuff when 
put to proof. Many also are proved secretly by pains 
and combats we know not of. 

If the emergency of temptation give the poet his 
tragedy, the emergency of endurance is the entrance 
of the hero thereof. For a great temptation overcome 
is itself a stress of emotion or of pain well borne. To 
bear is harder than to do; therefore to be equal to an 
emergency of endurance has always been rated very 
high in virtue — the martyr's crown, the halo of the 
obscure hero, of the domestic saint. But the kind of 
bearing is to be examined. There is a stolid and sour 
endurance, the which is no more than a rage which, 
being impotent to invade or resist, burns sullenly on 
itself. But the beauty of a sweet and patient endur- 
ance is, perhaps, the greatest of all beauty; for there 
is not a thought of self in it — only pure piety and hu- 



184 Of Emergency 

millty. But often it has a double grace — when pain 
is met to shield others from it; for then to the dignity 
of patience is joined the loveliness of devotion. 

I have observed that some persons who endure 
little ills only badly and peevishly meet great dis- 
tresses with nobility. Strange fact, seeming contrary 
to moral analogies! I know not how to account for 
the power thus to be noble in the great when ignoble 
in the small, nor to class the fact, unless with sheer 
selfishness of reason and of will ; for, surely one who 
discerns cause and summons power to meet bravely 
great stress of pain in body or mind, may see reason 
and raise strength to mount over little ills, if mind and 
will be applied. I must call it the nobler and stronger 
thing to bear graciously the daily privations and 
pathway pains, however little conspicuous or histori- 
cal ; for, first, this un vaunting heroism will be found 
equal to great occasion if called to it; secondly, what 
more divine than to meet all the daily bombs and 
rockets of a much-besieged life, intrenched in quietude 
and with victorious sallies of common patience. 

In fine, it seems that the emergency of volition or 
of action not so much tests quality of mind as distin- 
guishes species thereof; but exigent temptation and 
emergency of endurance are assays of soul. 



OF CONSCIENCE 

Perhaps it is strange to speak of using the con- 
science; so of the will; as if there were a conscience 
and a will back of them. Yet this is common speech. 
It is often said, " bring your conscience to bear," or 
" put forth your will." But what is to urge conscience 
but conscience, or what drive the will but will. This 
is like a poet's thought concerning a dream, 

"In which you, dreaming, image your own heads;" 
which perhaps a man never does awake, for it has 
been remarked how hard it is to call up an image of 
ourselves. Though Luther called the epistle of 
James a straminea epistola^ yet the apostle has the 
wisdom to compare a man's f orgetf ulness of his visage 
with his moral ignorance of himself; for he says, "If 
any one be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is 
like a man beholding his natural face in the mirror, 
for he beholdeth himself and goeth away and straight- 
way forgetteth what manner of man he was." I 
know not whether it be so as to dreams, as the poet 
says. Novalis suggests a different conclusion; "We 
are near waking when we dream that we dream." 
For surely it must be very like dreaming of dreaming 
to dream that we, the dreamers, behold ourselves 
apart. But however this, it seems something like it 
to speak of using conscience, or of using the will; for 
these are, if so I may speak, the users of all the other 
powers, as the eye is the organ of seeing all things; 
(185) 



1 86 Of Conscience 

:iiul since the " eye sees not itself but hy reflection hy 
some other thing," so how can conscience and will, 
which lie under all using, lie also under the use of 
Ihc-mselves? Yet though this he a strange thought 
would it not be stranger still if men spoke so, yet 
willioul any meaning, and uttered something that had 
no import whalcver? I must think, therefore, that so 
long as we can get so much image of anytliing as to 
ilollic il with vesliluic of language, there is yet a 
greater depth; and however elemental what we speak 
of, as conscience seems, and will seems, still, if we can 
bring lliem inlo sjieech at all, there must be "in the 
lowest deei) a lower deep," as Milton has it, of which 
we can not even think or speak; yet, perhaps, it is 
out of this dial men speak of a conscience of con- 
science, or a will over will. 

Now here, though we swim in dee]) waters, :md 
know not what is inider us, yet in someway we must 
trust to the whole depth and integrity of the sea, as 
he that swims dives fearlessly, knowing that he will 
not be dashed against anything. How little soever 
we can explain or express it, it seems a fact that there 
is a kind of conscience of conscience; for conscience 
nuiy be turned awry, or fall sick in a moral pestilence, 
like any other faculty, antl then it reports its illness 
to somewhat in us as the body does to the mind. 
ICveiything has just its own place, and conscience no 
more than its own; wherefore it may tyrannize or 
usurp like any other power, and encroach. There- 
fore, however strange il may seem, I think any one 
may observe some delicate persons whose conscience 



Of Conscience 187 

Is tyrannous, that Is, so races into view at all moments 
as to take no account of any harmony, but thrusts 
Itself forward at all times like a much-speaking per- 
son wlio talks so much that perforce he can not 
utter wisdom always. I knov/ not wliether one may 
not he hridled and ridden by conscience as by any 
other jud;^ment or feeling or faculty. And if con- 
science may sicken by induration as often is seen, until 
there be no sensitiveness, why may It not sicken also 
the other way l)y being nursed indoors, as it were, till It 
grows soft and takes a shock from the natural air? 
Perhaps conscience is in this state when persons object 
to aught in its own place, or conceive too readily that it 
has no place, as for examjile dancing and other pleas- 
ures. For there are many to whom pleasure itself 
savors of evil and every gayely is a ])eril, a brute 
ignorance in the lamb that fri.sks, but a corruption of 
heart in the man who sports. I think I have seen 
such like diseases, as I have said; I have seen (unless 
I be color-blind in this matter, and unwittingly, 
as all blindness Is, for the only perfect blind- 
ness is blindness to the blindness) a conscience so 
exacting for truth that it will over-ride every claim of 
mercy, and trample on a jjersonal feeling as if, so I 
have thought sometimes, a keen eye and obedient 
speech for truth must set a devil's hoof on the heart. 
Now the truth has its claims; and while I argue not 
here what claims, yet I deem awry tliat conscience 
which so combines the truth with all claims as to 
think the sum of all duties, or even at all times the 
chief, is to set forth the truth. There is a virtue which 



i88 Of Conscience 

is as unyielding as adamant, and as proof against all 
temptations as a granite cliff against the wave which 
it breaks to sjjray ; but this virtue may be as grim as 
it is strong, and nourish no green thing and no beauty 
on it. I have heard the saying, " I like this man's 
faults better than that other man's virtues," which, 
though it be an imperfect and partial saying, if exam- 
ined logically, like many such that condense much in 
a little, has simply this meaning in it, that conscience 
may be tyrannous; and this is the same as to say in- 
flated, vain, complacent, for no one can be a tyrant 
who has not a vast opinion of himself. This leads to 
think how great and splendid a thing good motive is; 
and, indeed, I will admit that perhaps conscience lies 
wholly therein ; for though I have spoken of a sick 
conscience, perhaps when the motive be sound it is the 
judgment only that is ill ; and then perhaps judgment 
can not sicken unless the heart ail also; and so some- 
times it appears that all is out of health together except 
only the soundness of the motive, which is the last 
citadel of health. 

Notwithstanding, pestilence may surprise even the 
castle of motive; and it is a strange power (rising up 
out of the depth which speech can not explore, nor 
thought even think of, as the eye can not see vision) 
that by conscience we can lay down rules for con- 
science and train it by good exercise, which is, for 
aught we know, as if a member of the body, feeling 
its own weakness, should set itself at exercise to gain 
strength. To mention some of this discipline, I 
would say conscience should not be displayed much 



Of Conscience 189 

in speech, still less by profession and of purpose; 
for is there not a certain modesty of mind as well 
as of body ? Not to wear the heart on the sleeve 
is a good precejot, and not a mere prudence but a deli- 
cacy; and so ought the conscience to be felt and 
known sacredly and not worn outside or proclaimed 
wantonly. There are privacies in the soul which 
willfully to strip naked is no more virtuous than in 
the body; but it is so much more a delicate vicious- 
ness that often mental modesty yet has to be grown 
to after the bodily long has been attained, so that 
many who would be confounded to be even a little 
undraped below the head walk stark nude in soul. I 
would have the conscience reserved chastely like our 
more uncomely parts, which, as the apostle says, 
"have more abundant honor," and, though draped in 
seclusion, are the media of life. Wherefore boast not 
of moral niceties, and set not out fine fidelities to the 
eye, but rather observe them faithfully, yet in some 
way cloaked by an easy manner, or at least not an- 
nounced and argued — a rightness of soul which 
Emerson advises thus: 

" Mask thy wisdom with delight ; 
Toy with the bow, yet hit the white." 

It goes with this that conscience on slight occasions 
is to be avoided ; I mean not, of course, that we may 
do slight wrongs, or even be little diligent in our own 
mind to decide on moral quality; but beware lest 
we make a kind of shame or wrong of a little point, 
which, though a duty, yet has its proportion and is 
not to be treated with grandeur and circumstance, as 



190 Of Conscience 

if, like Huss, one were going to the tiames for refus- 
ing an equivocation. For though every duty has a 
great value, and every faithfuhiess which costs judg- 
ment and will has a grandeur beyond compass of 
speech, yet this is a value and a greatness like that of 
the earth-worm in his place, but not at the head of an 
army or clothed with pomp. Especially points of 
conscience are to be distinguished from matters 
of taste or judgment, for not everything which we 
disapprove must be lifted into a matter of conscience. 
Yet I have observed this to be a great fault, and per- 
haps I may say a common fault, wherever conscience 
is common; for many so befog themselves with little 
considerations, multiplying with every year, like the 
Rabbinical exactions growing for centuries, that at last 
every concession seems an iniquity, and any difference 
from themselves a difference from the right in how 
small a point soever. These persons are very uncom- 
fortable in company; for, as Plutarch says the 
Athenians called their enviousness love of liberty, so 
these persons make the having their own way a 
point of morality. When once this ethical obstinacy 
has set in, there is no manner of treatment for it but 
to leave the victim alone; and I know of no disease 
more fit for a pest-house or an asylum than this; for 
even though others catch not the sickness (yet some- 
times unsoundness spreads by imitation, which is a 
kind of mental contagion), still they will be plunged 
into struggles and contentions, as in dealing with the 
maniacal. 

Now, as to cases of conscience, how they are to be 



Of Conscience 191 

argued when questions arise, there are two sources of 
difficulty; one is complexity of conditions and ele- 
ments, and the other is gradation. As to complexity, 
it is plain that no one can bring to one point the 
thousand elements and relations which any social act 
has; for it hangs by innumerable threads on what has 
gone before, and things to come are attached to it by 
still more countless webs. Now, as one can not know 
all the past and much less can foresee consequences 
the problem of what is right and wise is often too 
vast for the mind to decide on the grounds which are 
in view. For such occasions there are two touch- 
stones. The first is patience and waiting; for, though 
we can not gather all the threads to argue and 
set forth reasons, yet it is a pregnant mystery that 
if we but wait long enough in any difficulty, and 
steadily look, at last we shall see the way, though we 
be as little able to argue it as before. The second 
touch-stone is moral sincerity; for always it is notable 
that those who unselfishly, purely, truly wish to find 
the right, differ not much nor go far wrong together. 
By difficulty of gradation in cases of conscience, I 
mean that right and wrong will sometimes pass one 
mto the other by shades, as colors do, so that to draw 
a line any wiiere and say, " On this side is the right, on 
that the wrong," will not bring all minds to agree- 
ment, nor can any one say surely where the line is, or 
whether there be one. For as one may start with 
white and by adding drops of blue finally arrive at in- 
tense indigo, yet be not able at any point to perceive 
that with one drop the color was white and with the 



1^2 Of Conscience 

next blue, nor yet be able to deny that after space 
enough it is blue at one end and white at the other, so 
with moral quality; though the extremes be plain 
enough, it is not easy always to argue quality or duty 
between. Now, for this difficulty the cure, as before, 
is sincerity. For however hard to argue a division 
line, the mind which, with simplicity, wishes to know 
the true nature of the case, will not grope long, nor 
will many who thus are sincere be found far from 
each other. 

From all this it will be judged rightly that to carry 
conscience well and nobly is a moral beauty, as 
carrying the head well is a physical grace. What 
arrests us in fine creatures notable for power and 
grace, like horses and antelopes, is the proud, fiery, 
splendid carriage of the head, wherein are expressed 
dignity, freedom and health. Now such a creature 
is a man; for if his head be poised by intelligence, 
devotion and dignity, it wags not widely for gesture 
or for assertion, but sits serenely, and the mag- 
nificence of its carriage seizes the eye. The like 
grace and power the character sets forth if conscience 
be carried nobly and in stillness — high without as- 
sumption, open but chaste, strict but with largeness, 
severe but with charity. 



OF HIS LETTERS 

There are delights of friends together; but the 
charm of letters, the delica'cy of the written word, 
the sight of the handwriting, and the character in 
these characters, is for the parted. Great joy it is; 
and no matter what bliss of union any two have had 
together, if never they have been parted, writing 
many and continuous letters, there is a chapter of 
bliss yet new for them. Not poems, not songs, are 
the love-lore of the world; but letters. Sometimes I 
bethink me that if the millions of letters in the mails 
of all the nations could be examined together on a 
day, they would honor the human heart; for would 
all the other contents of them together, whatever of 
selfishness, wickedness, cruelty, ambition, equal their 
freight of solicitude, of affection? A friend wrote 
me (excusing his slack correspondence) that the quill 
was the implement of his work, he being a scholar, 
and that when he had used it all da}'^ for duty, it was 
not easy to take it again for pleasure. Yes; reason- 
able. Yet happier he who has a stream of corre- 
spondence flowing with a gentle slope, like a mild 
but wide river, which moves without demonstration, 
but never stops. Literary labor falls easily to selfish- 
ness, isolation, petty sentiments, but epistles may en- 
rich the work with a real and deep power. For 
(193) 



194 Of ^^^ Letters 

however either genius or labor wield the pen, 
thoughts will not strike fire unless the heart bestow 
love; and only thoughtful service is bestowal, emo- 
tion being but the herald thereof. 

The bliss of correspondence comes with letters not 
written at a sitting, but continually, at many moments, 
with fresh greetings at morning or farewells at night, 
with the impulse of an event just happened, or a 
great idea met. At such times a page may rush 
forth; or, again, a sentence, and less, a word, will be 
enough. I had a friend, a noble soul (I have him 
still wherever he be, though his bodily hand writes 
no more), whose habit was to carry in his pocket 
scraps of paper, labeled with the names of his 
friends; when came a thought or an event good to be 
written to one of these, he entered it on the appro- 
priate paper. Thus his letters preserved for each the 
special substance of life to each belonging, and were 
a deep, beautiful stream. 

It is a charm and benefit of letters that they are 
fresh and free with the wisdom that comes of life. 
Who studies for a letter? Who will plan researches, 
examine books, plunder lexicons, for a letter? Not 
from books, but from the morning outlook, the even- 
ing's reminiscence, the day's labor, the success or the 
overthrow, comes the letter, leaping from these like a 
familiar voice from a roar of sound, or even from a 
babel of noise, to the ear that knows it. If the letters 
have in them moral earnestness, religious reflection, 
they are the better, for these never are so natural 
as in the half privacy, half confidence, which a 



Of JFft's Letters 195 

letter is, being talk to a friend under the shelter of the 
twilight of distance. This is communion as if with a 
low voice at dark, when the face can not be searched. 
Then i^eligion is an outpouring natural, simple, free, 
and from the very midst of affairs, like a spring in a 
marsh, and without the plague of doctrines. 

I have this bliss, all of it, and more than I could 
tell with apparent soberness; for I have a friend who 
writes me as I have described. He is dear to me, 
surely; more, he deserves to be dear to a better; but 
the best is that he pours his excellence around me as 
I am. To describe him, not his mind nor his heart, for 
I will let these speak in his own words, but that he 
may be a figure to the mind's eye, imagine him thus: 
a swart brown man, with a deep-set gray eye and a 
jutting brow; with hair that once was rich all over a 
fine head, but now, thinned by labor and sorrow, 
sweeps and clusters low in the neck; an agile frame, 
rapid without hurrying; a strong nose, a kind mouth; 
firmness in the plant of his feet; honesty in the 
erection of his head. He directs a business reaching 
wide and far, nourishing many industries and filling 
his life with vast, absorbing labors. Out of these 
labors he writes me, and through his words I look 
at courage and faith. Thus he says : 

" I cannot see the end of much that I must do, I cannot pre- 
dict, but 1 have learned that the greatest test any one can 
be put to is to go fearlessly on in the right; and have faith 
enough to rest therein, looking neither backward nor forward, 
up nor down — rest I say in the sense of stability as a rock in 
the hillside, as though there were no yesterday. The hill bore 



196 Of His Letters 

the storm then; it is gone; it has the sunshine of to-day; it is 
ready for to-morrow. I have several experiences of the won- 
derful discipline there is in faith, and the definition thereof is 
now realized to my mind. Faith is a misapplied word when 
set to the theological scheme as the way of salvation ; faith to 
me now is something which follows truthful, disinterested, 
sincere action, and stands waiting to see whether you will 
accept whatever comes of such conduct, though it lead 
where you know not, see not, away entirely from your own 
plan. The point is whether I shall wish I had not done this 
or that, whether I shall wish another way had been chosen, 
whether I will seek to retrace steps, or whether I can say, I 
saw not, and yet I acted to do right. Gloom and anxieties 
followed and beset me everywhere, light has not come, night 
has set in ; still the right existed all the same, and it follows 
not that it was wrong because building thereon all was not to 
be illuminated immediately. When thus I have thought, then 
the rest I have spoken of comes in, a something which does 
not permit of carrying yesterday into to-day's work, or of 
shadowing to-morrow before it comes. Then faith stands 
waiting to see whether you are willing to leave results to the 
right of yesterday to work its own way, though not your way. 
I have learned a little of it, feebly indeed yet, but I have seen 
enough light to gladden my heart on the way. I hope to have 
greater knowledge." 

Thus my friend writes, in the spirit of the poet, 

" Look straight at all things from the soul, 
But boast not much to understand; 
Make each new action sound and whole, 
Then leave it in its place unscanned." 

A man so minded is like to be a great lover of the 
country, because he will feel the adorable sweep of 
life and law, and will touch re verently whatever is ; 
wherefore my friend writes: 



Of His Letters 197 

" There is no life equal to that in a country home. Nothing 
would tempt me to live ever again in the city. Everything 
seems more honest here. The very air we breathe seems per- 
vaded with a quality morally as well as physically bracing. 
It opens wonder-working to the mind, the power of silent 
forces in which man has no hand except as servant," 

It is blissful to me to receive such-like words, not 
from studious hours, nor from sermons, or moralists' 
arguments, but from amid noisy affairs, as I have 
said. In the tumult he feels guarded, as if surround- 
ed by a strong help; for thus he writes again: 

" I feel sometimes that there is some spirit of good over- 
hanging me, indefinable, yet so real as to lead me to wonder 
and wonder, and murmur thanks as though addressing some 
one ; for you little know what difficulties I have had these two 
years, outside of injustice and death; and I have seen them 
approaching mountains high and rolling with the force of 
thundering seas, and have had to stand and face them, and in- 
stead of inundation and destruction, they would appear to 
strike and then to scatter as spray from a rock, and I would 
cry in my utmost soul a thanksgiving, and turn to see who 
and what the power was that had broken them. I felt humbled. 
What is the power, what the irresistible call that bade it come 
forth.?" 

Always a large soul has learned to wait, or has 
waked to life from the lap of a blessed patience 
which nurtures it forever. So with my friend. He 
has the wisdom which tries to force nothing, and he 
knows that the human mind works more than ap- 
pears. He says : 

" How often the door opens better than we can plan for 
ourselves ! How often do I realize that a matter seems diffi- 
cult to solve for weeks and weeks, and lies on the table, as it 



198 Of His Letters 

were, before my mind, taken up off and on, laid down again, 
then finally is solved as by magic at an unexpected moment 
when apparently I had not thought of it." 

He ascribes this power of mind to the justness and 
wholeness which a distant view gives, for he writes 
again: 

"In 3'our letter you mention how different matters look at a 
distance. Is it not because at a distance, or in retrospect, the 
former specially, intuition has its fair play and either becomes 
part of judgment or acts as a guide to it.' It almost seems to 
me that intuition comes near to a supernatural power, and has 
in it a sure, analytical force, different in sort from that com- 
monly used daily; to me it only comes with waiting." 

Oh, the wisdom of that word, waitingX Whoso has 
learned the secret of life, of power, of thought, of 
command, can wait. Buffon (others too) calls genius 
only patience. De Maistre said, perhaps more truly: 
" To know how to wait is the great secret of success." 
But one must wait working; also work waiting. 
The waiting is the harder; many who can toil vastly 
when results speed closely, are disheartened if after 
labor they must wait. To wait with serene poise, 
which, having spared no effort, will then fear nothing 
nor agitate itself, but knows it is childish to assume 
the responsibilities of Providence — this Is peace and 
strength. Light is sure at last, says my friend, thus: 

•' I am waiting for more light than I have yet, that I may 
know the best way. At such times I feel the need of a 
sympathetic heart to confer with. Well, I have always had 
daylight peeping through the cloud if I wait long enough ; so 
I shall now." 

But must there be lis-ht? Must the morning- dawn 



Of His Letters 199 

at last to these very eyes of flesh ? Must we come 
out always victorious, and reap, bind, store away 
sheaves of reward? No; sometimes hope casts a 
long shadow, even over and beyond the horizon. 
Then enters with the courage to work and with the 
faith to work in darkness, and with the piety to wait, 
also a submission which has its own heroism. And 
this has my friend. He writes: 

" Sometimes I feel as if breaking under a load. I have 
found myself murmuring to myself almost audibly, that if I 
can have five years more of vigor I would not ask for more. 
This comes of course from a desire to finish my appointed 
task and a fear sometimes lest I may go before it is done. 
Still, I do not brood over the fear; I do each day's work, and if 
at any time it be the last, why, I have done all time granted, that's 
all. More and more I grow to feel that the numbers of those 
whose lives entitle them to be judges of others is too small 
even to be counted one. The revealed part of action is so 
small a part of the whole, and yet the only part which the 
ninety and nine ever knowi!of from which to judge. So when 
a life goes out and the judgment of our fellows is passed on it, 
how little they know, after all, and how well it is so often that 
it is hidden ! So, whether I do or do not ever complete my 
work it will not matter much, for living I feel it important, 
but dead of no account." 

This echoes to my heart with pathos the wise saying 
of Emerson, and each has the complete doctrine of 
Providence in it: "Every man is needed, and no 
man is needed much." 'Tis like also the thoughts of 
the Emperor Aurelius which are the last in his book: 

" The man to whom that only is good which comes in due 
season, and to whom it is the same thing whether he has 
done "more or fewer acts conformable to right reason, and 



200 Of His Letters 

to whom it makes no difference whether he contemplates the 
world for a longer or shorter time — for this man neither is 
death a terrible thing. ***** But I have not finished 
the five acts, but only three of them.' — Thou sayest well, but 
in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be a 
complete drama is determined by Him who was once the 
cause of its composition, and now of its dissolution ; but thou 
art the cause of neither. Depart, then, satisfied, for he also 
who releases thee is satisfied." 

Browning says the like, by the similitude of a tune of 
which each note is 

" Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest," 
without which there were no melody; and no note 
knows the tune which by entering and departing it 
helps. 

Who is submissive and brave in one who trusts not 
in the moral law and knows not the majesty and 
power of moral force? For nothing is worthy of sub- 
mission but the sovereignty of the good and the true. 
Therefore has my friend a fine sense of invisible 
moral forces. It covers with wise reflection his use of 
time, for he says: 

"To-day ends the first month of this year. One-twelfth 
gone ! How serious things seem if we stop to ponder how 
fast the time speeds away ! Things not done at thci appointed 
moment of opportunity granted cannot be exactly the same if 
done afterward, because then they are robbing some other 
thing of its time; and thieving does not prosper." 

Here is the philosophy of the parable of the ninety 
and nine sheep; for all together they could not make 
up for the one that strayed ; yet more valuable by 
ninety-nine times. But each person and exigency has 



Of His Letters 301 

its end and place, so that there is not time nor power 
to make up for any other, and creation is at a stand 
by so much till the strayed creature return. But how, 
indeed, shall a strayed hour be caught? My friend 
writes again of the present moment thus : 

" There are many things that I would have had different 
and could have made different if acting in the present light; 
but one cannot act over again for the past out of present 
knowledge. The truth simply is, that we must act right for 
the moment we are in, and not for some other time yet to 
arrive. I fear the thought of the future must often embarrass 
an honest simple conduct." 

Whoso knows that the moral forces hold the 
universe (which Emerson has written thus, "Gravita- 
tion is identical with purity of heart"), never plumes 
himself on smartness or bows to mental brilliancy. 
My friend says: 

" I feel so entrenched by the truth of facts, and so sure of my 
desire to correct any error of judgment, that I feel a biding 
sense that all light will be ready for each emergency. A great 
hidden power exists in daily considering each proposed act 
from the highest, purest, motive, and leaving it to its own re- 
sult. Some people call it ability; but it is only obedience to a 
law far above human analysis." 

And again, 

" I feel a self-confidence ; but never apart from me is the 
sense of fallibility, and my greatest fear is lest my friends have 
more confidence in me than I deserve or is good for me. I 
court all the while a criticism of myself and of my motive, 
and with simplicity of belief that there is no special smartness 
or endowment in what I do, but simply obedience to law such 
as this, that success comes to the toiler having a good motive 



202 Of His Letters 

to prompt and faith to act. The interpretation of the word 
success is to be measured by the conditions peculiar to each 
person, not by the social law which means great accumulations 
or power." 

" If this is to be as hard as the things past, I am ready to face 
it. I am almost learning to rejoice in defeat as well as in vic- 
tory, as just as much a means of good. * * * j feel 
like welcoming some such balk as a discipline. I may have 
one to-morrow. I am bound away on matters of much con- 
cern ; the issue may be favorable or unfavorable. Still, I go 
prepared to take either as the outcome of but one line of action 
— the right line." 

This is like Emerson's vigorous "Adversity is the 
prosperity of the great:" of which speaking, William 
Salter says, " If this seems strained, yet we do not 
feel it so when we see some heroic man or woman 
bearing up under great ills with godlike equanimity 
and patience. O, friend, think not thyself off the 
track of destiny, because things are awry and fortune 
does not smile upon thee, and thou hast not, perhaps, 
a thing that thou era vest; think not that the World- 
Spirit has not any path marked out for thee to follow. 
The path of duty is still the predestined path ; and, 
though it be no longer to do, but to bear, bear as 
bravely as thou wouldst do, and never was there better 
soldier of duty than thou." 

Marcus Aurelius continually urges a two-fold con- 
dition of man, that his nature is rational and social ; 
hence, impiety is a disregard of either part. So my 
friend, in his wisdom, neglects not to join the social 
part with the reign of the moral force; of which he 
writes thus: 



Of Hh Letters 203 

" Have jou heard how our friend A. is teaching and study- 
ing with iiis boj? The best part will be what the lad acquires 
from the companionship. He will realize it by and by; years 
hence it will be a sort of sudden revelation at some time, 
how much then at these intimate times went out from his 
father to him, silently, and became a part of him ; nothing to 
talk about, describe or define, but vi'hich shows itself in action. 
I myself feel the influence of mind on mind, as a great silent 
power going on steadily when we are heedless and careless of it. 
And these careless moments being the inost frequent, I fear the 
influence is often very bad. Not what has happened to myself 
to-day, but what has happened to others through me — that 
should be my thought." 

To do good and know it not has been the theme of 
preacher and of poet. There is a deep philosophy of 
habit, that it is the supreme reward of virtue. This 
also, by confidence in moral force, has my friend the 
wisdom to see, writing thereof thus: 

" I have discovered that wisdom of action generally is in 
proportion to the purity of motive, and if we stop first to con- 
sider the motive and whether it is all good or has evil parts, 
and purge it of the latter, judgment then is multiplied just so 
much in clearness. This is not a new idea, perhaps, but it has 
becoine more personal to me, and froin a weak beginning now 
I want first to form the habit so to question motive, and then 
to lose the sense of will in invariable unconscious action." 

It were strange if courage, faith, piety of waiting, 
humility of submission and trust in moral forces, led 
not my friend to a wise questioning of his under- 
standing as well as of his conduct; and so indeed it is. 
He is not a scholar, nor would be called a thinker, 
that is, one who wrestles with reasonings of set pur- 
pose and from scientific interest. My friend is a man 



204 Of His Letters 

plunged deep in exacting business, and wringing day 
by day from hard affaii"s gracious drops of reflection 
and of duty. But well it were if all scholars and 
philosophers knew, as does he, the worth of the 
mind's unharnessed motion joined with loving con- 
ference. Of this he writes : 

" I have a habit when I leave my store homeward bound of 
bringing before me a summary of the day's doings, and I de- 
rive much from it, and not infrequently correct next morning 
any step which in the calmer moment seems incompletely or 
poorly taken. The panorama passes before my mind's eye, 
and one or two of the most important things linger without 
suggestion or attempt on my part to dwell on them specially ; 
and there they will lie, neither disturbing nor harassing, but 
announcing themselves as present for examination. So in the 
silence of the journey I am still working out my questions, — 
very enjoyably, too. Then often next morning I go over my 
thoughts with a chosen friend, either to call out his or to pro- 
voke a criticism on my way, or to notice concurrent feelings." 

Such is my friend, and such his letters that feed me. 
A rich possession! What vein of wealth is the like 
thereof, or what food of mind gives such strength? 
But am I alone with such blessedness? No ; then I 
were ashamed to show it. I would flaunt no joy in 
eyes that lack it. I am persuaded, as in the begin- 
ning I have said, that the Post Office, which is the 
clearing-house of love, is effluent to all points with 
the like thoughts and feelings, as a sun sheds light 
spherically. But who is my friend? What, thou 
wouldst leave me no mystery? Read Browning's 
" House," and "At the Mermaid," which, though I 
like them not, surely string a truthful harp with 



Of Character as a Work 205 

strong sinews. Love has its rights, life its privacies. 
Keep thine in thine own heart; but see that thou 
drinkest w^hen a glass in thy closet stands full of bliss 
and of good for thee. 



OF CHARACTER AS A WORK 

What part of the value of anything is the material 
of it, and w^hat part the vv^ork wrought on the mate- 
rial, is a proof question always — proof sometimes of 
the article, sometimes of the asker or of the answerer. 
Some things are useful without labor, like air, water 
and natural foods, as berries, roots, esculent stems; but 
other edible things are useless unwrought, as quinces 
and the like in fruits; also, wheat, corn and other 
grains, unless they be made into bread. For although 
digestion perhaps may be trained to the raw wheat 
and other grain, yet these, unsifted and uncooked, 
give but coarse food, which supports but coarse mind 
and rude intelligence; so that it is the labor in food 
on which we thrive, which is the fine part of the 
food, and nourishes fine flesh in the body and fine 
quality in the soul. Some things which are needful 
are yet so useless In themselves that nearly all the 
value is the work in them. Such things are the 
metals, which in their ores lie gross and worthless, 
but which, evoked and wrought, flourish in value. It 
is said " a chain was manufactured at Woodstock 



/ 



2o6 Of Character as a Work 

which weighed only two ounces and cost £70, being 
163,600 times the value of the original iron from 
which it was made." 

Now, this is to be seen, that the higher towards 
beauty grows the value, the more it is in the work 
and not in the material. For as in food for the body 
it is only satisfaction of hunger that is thought of, 
with cleanliness, so one loaf is like another, and, save 
for the natural bits of color, the pretty minglings of 
brown and white, no beauty is looked for. But in 
the bit of iron-work which was so rare, the beauty 
and delicacy were the worth. When the great pro- 
ducts of beauty come forward, like glorious statues 
and glowing paintings, the value is all in the work, 
part of the work being the greatest of labors, — the 
efforts of thought and imagination. For the material 
is but a little stone which carts might trundle on, or a 
little cloth and color priced at a few pennies. But 
yet another step — wherewith we come to values which 
have no material at all, like dancing, singing, har- 
mony of instruments, powers of language; herein all 
the value is the work. 

Now, it is to be seen that character is such a value, 
which has no material at all, and the greatest of all 
such values; therefore, all the worth of it is the power 
of the work gone into it. It is as invisible as voice 
or harmony, as inaudible as dancing or gesture. Now 
is there any truth so great which is so much forgotten 
by men as that such a thing must have a work- 
worth or no worth ? For what else do not men think, 
lay large plans, and toil to bring their devices to issue; 



Of Character as a Work 307 

But, albeit character is the first of interests and good 
character the most shining of graces, who think, as 
with hammer and chisel or with pencil, to work at it 
that it may be wrought like ivory or fine metals? 
Take we not rather ourselves as we are, thinking that 
only if we keep clear of bad things and live in good 
neighborhoods, we may give attention, time and toil 
to other things, and good character will grow amain ? 
But in truth It is to be wrought, being of that order 
in which the work is all the value. When character 
towers, somewhere there has been work; if not by us, 
then behind us; for when beauty is once wrought it 
goes by descent, like a strong body. But inheritance 
improves not on itself, and nature, which transmits, 
will not do everything for us in the transmitting, any 
more than in the first conquest. If we let go, it 
is certain the character will not refine; and soon it 
will grow wild, for all things have a gravity toward 
the unwrought state, from which they must be held 
up by the work which first lifted them, as the chain, 
whose work-worth was many times the substance- 
worth, would speedily be rusted to fragments or even 
to powder if left to the elements, as fine-fingered to 
destroy as the workman to compact. Truly, no doubt 
if one have a good spirit from ancestors and be steady 
in some industry and keep from bad company, he will 
grow respectably. But I speak now of higher aims; 
also, besides, of the many (nay, who not?) who have 
besetting temptations and weak spots to look after^ 
The grand sculptures in character, the mighty works 
jn that marble, the strong figures of patience, gentle- 



i 



208 Of Character as a Work 

ness, long-suffering, will, the beauty of disciplined 
passion, the majesty of truthfulness — these things are 
works. 

As if we were placed to lack no advantage, we take 
a new set-out every quarter century of hours. If one 
freshly would ask himself in the morning, What is 
the first aim for to-day ? what could he answer but to 
make himself what he ought to be ? If, answering 
so, he then would ask himself how the many things 
which he must do that day might be brought to help 
make him what he ought to be, and if then he would 
f orelook to put aside all hindrances of the aim, and if 
he would plan and invent how he might quicken some 
virtue wherein he fails, and set his will to apply his 
device, and all this with the attention with which he 
contrives for his gains — then would he be at work on 
his character. It would be wrought to excellence, 
which is beauty; this is certain. Says an ancient 
scholar: '•'• Ora et iterum oraj veniet hora qua tibi 
dabltur; " whereof the noble and fruitful interpreta- 
tion is a common proverb: " ^ui laborat^ oraV — he 
prays who works. When Plutarch wished to learn 
patience, he set himself to go one day without showing 
displeasure; for surely, if he would, he could go one 
day without anger. Then when he could be always 
patient on any day when he would, he set himself two 
days; and so at length he overcame violence 

The holy William Law enforces that even religion 
is no foreign sphere to labor; for even religious expe- 
rience, not much to be exposed, spoken but in corners 
and in whispers, is to increase, as moral beauty does, 



Of Character as a Work 209 

by diligent care and effort. For it is not only the 
hand or mind which habit and exercise made quick, 
but also feeling, and sense of beauty, with enjoyment 
thereof, by bringing the senses frequently into the 
presence of lovely things, and turning the mind to 
dwell on them to learn the source of their charm. 
Likewise devotion, wonder, worship, are wrought by 
thither turning our feet where hallowed associations 
gather, and our eyes toward the glories and mysteries 
in which we move, and our thoughts to thinking upon 
them. Says William Law: 

" That is a strange infatuated state of negligence wliich keeps 
people from considering what devotion is. For if they did 
but once proceed so far as to reflect about it, or ask themselves 
any questions concerning it, they would soon see that the spirit 
of devotion was like any other sense or understanding that is 
only to be improved by study, care, application, and the use of 
such means and helps as are necessary to make man a profi- 
cient in any art or science." 

If character-working be a greater art than any 
other modeling, and make more glorious forms than 
the brush, it has also this special dignity, that all may 
be busy in it. Matters it much with what diversities 
of genius, strength or grace the struggle begins? 
No; the beauty and power wrought at last crown the 
toiler. Nay, even we shall see the ill-furnished and 
the ill-placed, with loads on their backs of ancestral 
weakness or misery, or chained to some bar or fenced 
in a little space, outstrip far the fortunate, free and 
prosperous, because they have wrought the better, 
though on stock which was poorer. 



OF SUPERIORITY 

Superiority commonly is thought a privilege. 
Privilege means private law, — that is, enactment for 
the special benefit of an individual, — which is odious. 
Now though superiority be privilege, yet also it is a 
necessity in nature's order; for, if no one ever rose 
above another, there could be no progress. But the 
harmlessness of superiority comes of union with sense 
of responsibility. That is to say, a superiority should 
seem to its possessor, not a boon to himself, but a bond 
of obligation to. the world. The responsibilities are 
chiefly three: 

First, to keep the good of the world in view, and 
to make our superiority tell for the whole. To do 
this very thing is a high privilege, as joy-giving as 
any; but It is a privilege which makes our eminence 
a boon to all as well as to ourselves; and this is the 
very obligation of superiority. Beautiful it is, in 
truth, that this duty done becomes the chief privilege 
of our advantage ! 

Secondly, we ought to act so much better than 
others, in all relations, as our superiorities are greater. 
In exigencies of life, in emergencies of sacrifice or 
peril or labor, in inequalities, enmities, jealousies, 
slights, in provocations of any kind, never can be set- 
tled the question who, by sheer justice, ought to step 
(210) 



Of Superiority 211 

forward in the emergency, meet the exigency, make 
reparation. It is, then, for the superior person to feel 
his superiority as a bond to lead in doing the right 
wise, patient, elevated act. This rule not always 
easily is applied in great exigencies; but beautiful the 
peace and serene the virtue if always it were applied 
between friend and friend or the one or two comrades 
of the moment! If then, in any abuse or trouble or 
need, the superior would say to himself, I am the 
older, the richer, the wiser, the better educated, the 
stronger, the higher in position, — these advantages 
are marks of God that I am the one to dare, to bear, 
or to forbear, — what peace, what excellence would 
grow! 

Thirdly, it is a responsibility of superiority not to 
show itself too much, and sometimes €ven to hide. 
This law has two parts: First, never ought we to 
flaunt our superiorities before the less endowed. La 
Rochefoucauld says, " It is a high degree of intelli- 
gence to know when not to display intelligence." So 
IS it with any superiority. How high or grand soever 
the super-excellence, to manifest it for display is un- 
comely, and odious if before the less fortunate. 
But, secondly, we should keep our superiorities out 
of sight in proportion to the lowness of the plane of 
them. Of course, this means not that superiorities 
should be hidden altogether, A beautiful face need 
not be covered, and beautiful behavior cannot be; 
but, as no superior endowment should be flaunted, so 
none should be suffered carelessly to appear in too 
great or painful contrast. And this care must be 



212 Of Supper lor ity 

taken specially as to superiorities less excellent in 
kind, because it is in these that the pain of deficiency 
or the greater pang of envy most is caused. We 
may make three chief groups of superiorities. The 
highest is moral or spiritual. This will, and ought to, 
appear simply. But none envy it. All may emulate 
it, all may rise to it, all w^ill adore it. Next is mental 
superiority. Herein, by so much as there is descent 
from the moral plane, care is needed. It is ruthless 
to show off wit or knowledge in some companies. It 
is nobler and very often kinder to let persons search 
in us for our accomplishment before it be found. Fin- 
ally, the lowest superiority is material, — attractions of 
appearance, face, figure, wealth, position. Now, in 
these we should study to avoid comparison. It is 
brutal selfishness willingly to force a contrast between 
our comforts, affluence, pleasures, beauty, and our 
neighbors' privations, penury, deformity. Many 
modes of living are blameworthy offenses against this 
simple law, how fine, delicate and gentle soever they 
seem. 



TOPICAL INDEX 



Advice. 14 — S' 

Albigenses . ...8 

Alfred the Great, story of 87 

Allen, Joseph H., quoted... 8 

Angelo, Michael, quoted. 109 

Anger 125— '33 

and other passions . 126 

Wastefulness of .,..126 

Pain of .126 

Appearance of 127 — 128 

Control of 128 

Weakness of 129 

and the will 129 

and Time 130 

Kinds of 131— '33 

Anquetil, death of 164 

Argonauts 90 

Aristocracy 93 

Aristotle, quoted, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 
90, 92, 9S. 

Arnold, Matthew, quoted.. 47 

AssER, quoted 87 

AuRELius, quoted, 14, 22, 37, 49, 66, 
113. '33. 140, 144, 148. 156, iS9i 
163, 199, 202. 

Bacon, quoted, 32, 34, 37, 132, 141, 

163. I7S- 

Balguy, Doctor, story of 62 

Beauty 206 

Berkeley, quoted 104 

Bird, story of a 30 

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted 136 

Browning, Robert, quoted, 120, 153, 
162, 166, 200. 

Brutus and his sons S^ 

Buffon, quoted 19S 

Bureau of Education 15 

Burke, quoted 145 

Captain of a ship, story of. 32 

(2 



Carlyle, quoted 44 

Censure 64—68 

Meanini^ of 64 

Conditions of . 64 

must be rare 65 

indirect 65 

must be unwilling 66 

in friendship.. ..67 

and praise 67 

Dangers of.. 136 

Chance 30 

Character a Work 205 — 209 

The work is the value 206 

and the morning 208 

Equality in 209 

Chinese Government 77 

Choice :. 7 — 10 

and sacrifice 7 

as a moral test 7 — 9 

as energy 9 

of the best 23 

Coleridge, quoted 155 

Common Sense 114 — 121 

Three meanings of 114 

as the common level 114 

and observation. .116 

Greatness of 116 

Reasonableness of . -"7 

Prevalence of 118 

as perception of common 

beauties 119 

as co?!set!sus of the great 120 

Conference 204 

Confucius, quoted 78 

Conscience iSj — 192 

Conscience of conscience, 

185—188 

Ill-health of 187 

and motive 18S 

Modesty in 1S9 

on slight occasions 189 

As to cases of. 191 

13) 



214 



Topical Index 



Conway's "Sacred Anthology," 

quoted 35 

Correspondence 193 

Courage of conviction 52 

CovvpER, quoted 141 

Criticism 106 

Culture, selfishness of 20 

Darwin, quoted.. 128 

Death 160 — iSo 

Fear of . 160 — 163 

Ease of 163—165 

as a vital act 165 

Seasonable death 166 

Organisms without death i63 

Mystery of i63 

compared with birth i63 

and life 170 

The wish for 171 

and the will.. 172 

Possible nearness of the dead 172 

Democracy of 174 

and the brain 175 

and bodies 176 

and personal identity. 177 

The look of 177 

A lesson from 178 

De Maistre, quoted 198 

Democracy 89, 93, 94 

Dickens, Charles, quoted 31 

Dreaming 185 

Education, bureau of 15 

Education, public 15—21 

Emergency iSo— 184 

defined 181 

Different minds in iSi 

Moral emergencies 1S2 

Endurance in 183 

small and great 184 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 13, 
'7' 24, 34, 46, 60, 112, 115, 116, 
128, 135, 153, 1,59, 195, 201, 202. 

Enemies 145 — 150 

and History 145 

and PViendship 146 

Uses of 147—149 

Griefs of ii^o 

English Press, anecdote of II'" .65 
Epictetus, quoted, 44, 51, 143, 167 

Epicurus, quoted 144 

Er-Rasheed, Haroon, story of,. 174 

Fable, Hindoo ....... -je 

Faculty II.'io— ij 

Conceit of n 

is wholeness n — \x. 47 

Faith T.v^t^ 



Flattery 69—76 

Meaning of 69 

sometimes a pretence 6g 

and the pulpit 70 

Weakness and strength of 71 

Kinds of.. 73 

Disposition open to 74 

and detraction 76 

Fontenelle, death of 164 

Fortune 33 

Franklin, quoted 42 

Frederick the Gkbat, story of. .60 
Friendship 23 

Galton, Francis, quoted ........13 

Gray, Thomas, quoted 23 

Genius 46 

George III., story of 70 

Goethe, story of .119 

Government 76 — 99 

The best ideally 76 

Noble kingship 78 

The best possible So 

Fitness for 80,86—89 

Tenure of office 8l 

Fitness of electors 82 — 84 

Citizenship 84 

Dangers of democracies, 89, 93, 

94 

Obedience 91 

Liberty and tyranny 91 

Democracy defined .. 93 

Aristocracy defined 93 

Power of a system 95 

Ethical effects 97 

Guillard, Nicholas Francois, story 
of 6s 

Habit 203 

Haller, death of 164 

Handwriting 99 102 

Twof ol d character of. 99 

Morality in 100 

Happiness and Time ..I.IIIIzi— 26 

Past, present and future 21 

as to friendship and love 23 

The passing moment 24 

Hare Brothers, quoted 76 

Haroon Er-Rasheed, story of 174 

Haydn, quoted 143 

Heroism, questions of SS— .S9 

Private and public claims 56 

Rights of love 58 

Hindoo Fable 35 

HiGGiNSON, Thomas W., quoted' 165 

His Letters 193—205 

Correspondence 193 — 195 

Description of him ---195 

of faith 195 



Toxical Index 



215 



His Letters 

of love of the country 197 

of trust 197 

of waiting 197 — 193 

of submission 199 

of time 200 — 20 1 

of mental power 201 

of social influence 203 

of habit ---203 

of conference, 204 

HOSMER, Frederick L., quoted. .171 

Hughes, Thomas, quoted 87, 143 

Hunter, William, death of 164 

Huss and the Emperor 67 

Immortal Lifk 150 — 159 

Primitive belief in 150 

Explanation of belief.. igi 

Belief ag-ainst sense 151 

Arguments for 152 

Analogy 152 

Intimations of 153 

Wholeness of life 154 

Health of the belief 156 

Splendor oi 156 

and love i0 

as a motive 157 

Impatience 24 

Individuality 47 — ji 

and Individualism 48 

in opinion 50 

in behavior 53 

James, Epistle of, quoted 185 

James, King, story of 144 

Jesus, quoted 10, 134 

Job, quoted 13S 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, quoted ...144 

Johnson, Samuel, quoted 77 

JORTIN, quoted... 145; 

Judge of Old Bailey, story of 58 

Judgment of Others 134 — 136 

Deceptions of 134, 

Knowledge and feeling in 135 

Dangers of 135 

Keeper of the Seals in France, 
story of ---S^ 

Kingship 78 

Knowledge 103 — 107 

Two conditions of . ..-103 

of ourselves 104 

of others 105 — 106 

of nature 107 

Knox, John, story of 67 

Lanier, Sidney, quoted 63, 160 

La Rochefoucauld, quoted, 11, 14, 

27. 2S, 7S, 133, 149, 211. 
Lav alette, Madame, story of... 57 



Lavater, quoted .177 

Law, William, quoted. .108, 112, 209 

Letter-wriumg 193 

Lkwes, George Henry, quoted.. 137 

Liberty 91 

Locke, John, quoted 141 

Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 

ISO 
Love 23, 124 

Lowell, James Russell, quoted, 19. 
109, 12S, 137. 

Luck 29-38 

Three meanings of 30 

and mental qualities 33 

and self-knowledge 34 

and patience 3S| 

and strong purpose 31; 

and ignorance 36 

Treatment of the lucky and un- 
lucky 36 

and fate 37 

Luther, quoted 185 

MacDonald, George, quoted... 135 

Macchiavelli, quoted 95 

Mandeville, Bernard de, quoted, 
126 
Marcus Aurelius v. Aurelius. 
Maundeville, Sir John, quoted, 175 

Meditation 107 — 114 

Meaning of -"-'7 

Great company bj' means of. 108 

lifts above ourselves X09 

Knowledge by means of 110-112 

and Time 113 

Memory 21 

Mill, James, quoted 97 

Milton, quoted 158, 1S6 

Morse, Sidney H., quoted. 52 

Necks, short and long 180 

Nicole, story of 60 

Nightingale, Florence, quoted 164 
NoVALis, quoted 185 

Obedience 9. 

Old Bailey, story of 58 

Ostracism 90 

Patience 24,35, 137— HS 

"Passionate patience" 137 

Nature of. 137 — '39 

with others I39 

and the morning .- 140 

with ourselves 141 

with Providence 143 

Peignot, story from, 69 

Persian, ancient, quoted... 34 — 35; 

PhoCION's saying 67 



2l6 



Toxical Index 



Plutarch, quoted, 38, 40, 67, 72,90, 
130, 147, 169, 190, 20S. 

a story from.. ......3S 

of the Spartan women 55 

PoE, Edgar Allen, quoted 43 

Poetry 46 

Politeness, French definition of, 59 

Praising 59—^3 

a liberty 59 

is good manners .,59 

is gfenerosity 60 

is honesty 60 

a difficult art 60 

discriminating 62 

in writing 62 

in friendship 62 

and censuring' 67 

Preachers, stories of 69, 71 

Predicatoriana, story from 69 

Prester John, story of 175 

Proctor, Richard, answer to Dick- 
ens 31 

Proverb, Turkish 34 

Public Education 15—21 

Regarding justice and expe- 
diency 15 — 1*^ 

as a debt of capital 17 

Justice of i^ 

Expediency of iS 

and Benevolence 19 

Psychometry 13 

Py-thagoras, quoted 141 

Questions of Heroism v. Heroism 

Requital 122—125 

Principle of 122 

as self-respect 123 

regarding love 124 

RiCHTER, Jean Paul, quoted 25 

Saadi, quoted I43 

Sacrifice 7, 10 

Salter, William M., quoted 202 

SCHEFER, Leopold, quoted, 25, 2,(>, 

49, 78, no, 113, 143, 153, 162, 165, 

166, 167, 168, 178, 179. 
Seein'g Good Things 38~42 

Happiness of 39 

Neglect of — ..-4*' 

Seneca, quoted, 49, 127, 130, 134, 

170, 171. 



Shaftesbury', quoted 12J 

Shakespeare, quoted 161, 182 

Shallowness ..13 

Side-lights of Intelligence, 

42—47 
Unity of understanding... 43, 46 

Moral aspect 44 

and experience 46 

Sidney', Algernon, quoted, 86, 87, 
91,96. 

Sight 39, 42 

Smith, Sidney, quoted 104 

Socrates, quoted 4S 

Solandek, story of 164 

Spartan Women 55 

Stoics, quoted 64, 109 

Stoics, the 7 

Submission 199 

Superiority 210 — 213 

as privilege 210 

ought to serve 2!0 

ought to lead in right-doing. 2 10 

ought to be reserved 2U 

Swift, quoted 70 

Taylor, Jeremy, quoted 127 

Thackeray, story of S^ 

Themistocles, banishment of 90 

Thomson, James, story of 8 

Thought, three qualities of 51 

three forces of •--S'^ 

Time and Happiness 21—26 

Trust 197 

Turkish Proverb 34 

Ty'ranny 9' 

Vainglory ...ji.26 — 29 

and consciousness... 26 

Folly of 27 

Hindrance by 28 

Pain of 28 

The worst vanity.. 29 

Failure of. 29 

Vibrations, orders of 173 

Waiting 26, 197, 198 

Wasson, David A., quoted, 89, 93, 
94.95 

Weiss, John, quoted S7i6i, 132 

W0LLA8TON, William, quoted.. 103 

Wordsworth, quoted. 155 

Zeno, quoted 5' 



016 115 729 6 



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